Mark's Flames Socks

So the point of these socks is that they'll look normal in shoes, but in sandals or bare foot you'll see that they have flames coming up from the toes not like athelete's foot (ha!) but like a hot rod car paint job. I kind of thought the top would have some flames, too, but no, we're just doing the toes.

There have been many, many little problems with these socks. He wants them to go up 10" on his legs, but not st. stitch, with ribbing all the way up. Ok. Wants a finer texture of the sock (ok so size ones, hmm, I'll have to use DPN instead of circs, crap.). So then my gauge was between 7.5 and 8 (so like 84 stitches around). So now I've knitted past the heel turn and am almost out of yarn. Ack. I have a total of 4 skeins. I'll start using the second "denim" skein but then I'll have to buy another one for the second sock. Also, just measured the gauge again so M could draw out his flames on graph paper... it's now like 8.5 st per inch. ACK! I'd like to have him try it on, but I really don't want to take it off the needles and it keeps falling off as it is now. I'm enjoying the knitting and it is more portable to be on DPNs (for walking around I mean, not as good in the bag).
For scale, my DPNs are 5" long.