A Question of Values

I knit my first pair of Thelonius in a variegated yarn. It had pinks, oranges, and purples:

It turned out very well, in fact, this was one of my favorite pairs of socks until they wore out completely. The reason the pattern worked even though it had lots of different colors in the yarn was because the color values were almost entirely the same. As you can see in a black and white picture, it's just about the same shade of gray throughout:

The new yarn, however, has a lot more variation when you look at a black and white picture of it, going from nearly black to almost white:

That's what muddles your patterns and makes it difficult to see what's going on with the yarn. This is the kind of yarn that generally works best in a simple rib or stockinette, but I'm not a fan of simple socks, so I couldn't just leave it at that. I had to find a pattern that would work with this yarn!