Yes, I have finished a third pair of socks in one month. We started with Winwick Mum’s Sockalong, progressed to a toe-up sock with an afterthought heel, and then I went straight to another toe-up sock, using that same pattern, but this time with a short row heel. And stripes! And a contrast heel!

What fun.

I went for 12 rows per stripe – based on eyeballing how it looked and whether I liked it – and carried the yarn all the way along. You can see where the yarn has been brought along the seam, and another time I’d try and get the start of row to be on the inside of both socks. Presumably I can achieve that with an extra half row somewhere along the line?

Some of those 12s became 13s. I let it happen, though I did try to match the inaccuracies (or shall we call them flourishes?) on the second sock.

I had 36g of the colourful yarn left, so I weighed it into two equal balls and just knitted until I ran out, then put the ribbed cuff on. I did have to use a stretchier bind-off on a larger needle, as they come higher up my calf. I thought I was doing Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off but it turns out I had misremembered how to do that… I made a yarn over before every stitch then passed both YO and previous stitch over that new stitch. I didn’t do it in the ribbing pattern. Listen, it worked out, and I’m sure it has a name, I just don’t know what it is.

I much preferred making the short row heel to the afterthought heel, or to picking up stitches. I tried two ways – one with a wrap and turn only on the reductions half of the heel, and the other with a wrap and turn on both reductions and increases. I think it made a difference – you can see there are more gaps in the heel on the right of the below picture – but neither was totally without gaps. But it was terribly easy to work.

I have another two 50g balls of the same brand sock yarn in different colours. The crash course in sock construction will continue!