Started this using the Mash-Up Magic Toe-Up Socks Recipe (MUMTU Socks). First, the eye of partridge just didn’t work with this yarn. The color change was too gradual to pop in that pattern, and, oddly, it only showed up with the cool honeycomb look about 30% of the time. It just appeared that I had omitted the slip stitches most of the time. But I swear I did them! An example of wrong yarn for that stitch pattern, for sure.

The final straw was the color change when I went back to knitting in the round after I finished the heel. With the slow color changes throughout the sock, the abrupt color change when I started the leg was too much.

My husband was driving us back from Memorial Day up north, so I iPhone researched afterthought heels, learned enough to know where to frog back to, and pulled it out to before the heel.

So, this sock is a mash-up of its own - toe from the Mash-Up Magic Toe-Up Socks Recipe (MUMTU Socks), heel from Car Socks. I started the afterthought heel at the same place I’d started the gusset for the toe-up heel.

I am a tense/tight knitter, so I went for a modified Russian bind off instead of the kitchener called for in the Car Socks pattern. Several sources said that the kitchener bind off should only be done on a 1x1 rib, and I would rather knit than sew anyway, so the Russian it is!

Ribbing at leg: K2, P2 knit on a size 0 needle (down one from the size 1 that knit the sock). I moved to a size 2 needle the round before the bind off, and then bound off with the 2. It’s a little curly off the body, but it it nice and open for slipping on and the cuff lays flat once it’s on an ankle, so I’m content.

Picking up stitches for the afterthought heel:
I picked up two stitches at each “corner”. All four stitches got decreased in the immediate next round in the pattern of other decreases (K2tog, knit across needle SSK).

The sock is a little tight on my foot. My mom’s is smaller than mine, but not enough so. I think I made it a bit too small :(.

new skills: afterthought heel
new lessons:

1. The waste yarn you pull out to make the afterthought heel is basically a reverse kitchener cast off. un-joining the rows of knitting.
2. Afterthought heels should be started later than heels in a gusset sock, at least it seemed to me that starting at the same place was too soon for this particular pair of socks and my particular pair of feet.