Saturday 15th April - A Good Day for Doing Things

 First of all (and this was a tense twenty-five minutes) I have started the heel of my sock;

Step one was to watch the Arne and Carlos video on how to pick up the stitches for 'the easiest sock in the world' - they make it look so easy...

Like I said, it was a tense time, with many pauses to check a) I was doing it correctly b) that my jaw wasn't clenched c) that I had remembered to blink my eyes d) that I was still remembering to breathe. Eventually I managed to pick up all 60 stitches, 30 on each of my bendy needles as opposed to splitting it between four needles as they do. 

More tension, as I unravelled the contrast thread that I had knitted in where the heel was going to be all those weeks and weeks ago

Leaving the stitches (31 on one needle now - how did that happen? And should there have been 32? Oh well. I couldn't see any dropped stitches anywhere....)

The next problem was 'did I have enough blue sock yarn?' The knitted swatch was a trial for another project, on larger needles, and weighed 1.5g. The little nest of yarn that I had left for the heels was 3g, so not enough for one heel let alone two. The ball of multicoloured sock yarn weighs 24.5g, so that made the decision for me - contrasting heels!

And I'm off!

The heel is going to be the most peculiar shape, as you just follow the instructions for the toe in reverse.

 Arne, or is it Carlos?, assures us that it will sort of round itself out with wear. I believe every word he says, I think... 

I've also cleared another couple of overdue emails, prepared two more tubs for veg planting and done a good deal of cross stitching.

Now why is everything centred on the page, and refusing to left align?