After-thought heel

I've been procrastinating a bit. I "should" be working on the current clue of the Ray of Gold MKAL I'm doing. Look how gorgeously the yarn works with the stitch pattern in my swatch



Instead I've started a scrappy ripple blanket and been knitting my stripy (stripey?) sock



I've been using these instructions as a basis for my afterthought heel. I knit my sock to about 2 inches shy of the end of my foot and then I knitted half a row (32 stitches) with some waste yarn and then carried on knitting as normal



After casting off my sock  I picked up the stitches either side of the waste yarn row and then unravelled it. In the tutorial I linked above the knitter unravels the yarn and then picks up the stitches. I did it differently because I was worried about dropping a stitch or 6 ;-)



I then unravelled the waste yarn to leave the live stitches on my circular needle ready for magic looping. On the first round I picked up a stitch in the gap between needles and immediately decreased it to try to reduce holes. I should probably have picked up two but hey ho!



Then I basically knitted a toe by repeating the following two rows using the magic loop technique but it would equally work on two circular needles:

Row 1
 - Needle 1: Knit to last 3 stitches then K2tog K1
- Needle 2: K1 Sl 1 K1 psso then knit to last 3 stitches K2tog K1

Row 2
- Needle 1: K1 Sl 1 K1 psso then knit to end
- Needle 2: Knit to end


I worked these two rounds until I got to 14 stitches on each needle, 28 stitches in total. I then joined them together using Kitchener stitch. Simples! I'm going to cast on for the second sock this afternoon, I'm looking forward to having this pair to wear.

I'm linking this post up with Keep Calm Craft On