The socks were pretty close to done, and I finally finished them last night. I’ve been knitting them since mid-February, but designing involves a fair bit of knitting and frogging and knitting and frogging.

The bit I was designing was a heel that didn’t break the graduation of colour with sock yarns like the Regia Hand-Dye Effect one I used. The finished sock looks a bit odd.

But it looks fine on the foot. The shaping creates a triangle. I did these toe-up but the instructions are the same for top-down.

I also realised after I started the second sock that I hadn’t started anywhere near the same place in the colour graduation to get matched socks. So I knit a longer foot and made sure the heel started at the same place, then frogged the toe and reknit it top down.

I’m planning to write up the pattern then test it. Knowing my luck the exact same thing will be published in a magazine or something before I get the chance to.

I finished two more WIPs on my list as well. The Painted Canvas Bag:

I’d been waiting until had the sewing machine out to sew the handles on, but when I came to do it I discovered there wasn’t room enough for the foot of the machine to move up and down with the thick handles in the way. I wound up hand sewing them with a bit ‘x’ on each loop attaching the handle, using black cotton warp ends.

The other finished project is the hemming of a silk scarf. It took me 2 1/2 hours to hand stitch this one, and it’s only a ‘scarflet’:

As Paul said: “I can see why you hate hemming silk scarves”.