How purple does purple need to be?

Hello, and welcome to the surprising world in which a person completely inundated by a wave of renovation can still manage to finish a pair of really warm, cosy, wool/mohair socks.

What do you think? If somebody presented these to you as 'purple', would you consider them purple, or point out that there's quite a lot of blue and pink and greenish yellow in there too?

I ask because I really want to give my urban hiking buddy, Jan, a pair of nice woolly handknit socks for Christmas.  Jan and I go for 3+ hour walks downtown at least twice a month, so socks are the right thing, and purple socks even more so.  Jan wears purple everything - everybody comments on it wherever we stop, with evident admiration - but she doesn't have a pair of purple socks as warm as you need for urban hiking in winter.

Now, I do have some purple wool set aside for Jan's socks; I was going to cast them on in time for the weekend.  But these ones are done now.  They might be a bit big for her (or her boots), they might be a bit too warm, they might also be not purple enough.  But they are done and with all the packing and moving and renovation planning going on, that is a pretty attractive feature.

Of course the downside is that I wouldn't get to wear them myself.  Maybe I should just cast on the solid purples and see how they come along... and if they don't come along fast enough, have these in reserve.

Oh, the scheming that goes along with this magical time of year... exciting, isn't it?  It's my favourite part of the holiday, plotting out little surprises.  Lucky Jan doesn't knit or read blogs since otherwise I would have blown this one with today's burning question.

Hope your holiday knits - for yourself or others - are coming along beautifully.  See you tomorrow!