The yarn is Cascade Heritage colour 5681, which is off-white/slightly grey (but not undyed), dyed myself with avocado pits & skins. It’s obviously more effective to use undyed yarn for hand-dyeing, this was just yarn I had left over and I wanted to try it out!

Toe up socks, done two at a time on long circular needles. First time doing toe-up socks successfully -- I cobbled together a few different patterns for the construction and used chart #85 from Hitomi Shida’s Japanese Knitting Stitch bible.

Cast on 24 stitches with Judy’s magic cast-on (should have done slightly fewer!). Knit first round (note that second needle has stitches twisted after this cast-on so ktbl).

Toe increases:
Row 1: K2, M1L (lift leg between stitches from front and knit tbl), K to 2 stitches before halfway, M1R (lift leg between stitches from back and knit) , k4, M1L, k to 2 sts before end, M1R.
Row 2: knit

Increase this way to 56 sts. At this point I started working only the central panel from lace chart #85 (28 stitches) across the top of the foot and continued to work all knits across the sole stitches (28 sts).

Worked straight until 9.75 cm shorter than desired foot length (maybe should have made the foot slightly shorter though).

Heel increases
Keep working chart across front as established. For the sole stitches:
Row 1: k1, M1R, k to one stitch before end of sole stitches, M1L, k1.
Row 2: k all.

Increased to 56 sts on sole only, so 84 sts total.

Heel turn
Last row worked across front panel before heel turn was row 27 of chart (on the second repeat of the whole chart). The heel turn was worked according to the instructions for the smallest size in the Speckled Space sock pattern (free on Ravelry, linked above).

Heel flap
Worked row 28 of chart across front. Still using the Speckled Space pattern as a guide, but I wanted a smooth heel, so rather than the sl1 k1 pattern in the Speckled Space socks I only slipped the first stitch of every row.

Leg
After the final turn on the heel flap (after the p2tog, turn of the last row 4 repeat from the Speckled Space pattern), I slipped the first stitch and worked across the back. From here I make the mid back the beginning of the row, and add the side lace section of chart # 85 on each side of the foot. So I worked the end of row 28 across the first 7 back leg stitches and the beginning of row 29 of the chart across the last 7 back stitches, keep front of foot in established pattern. I also added a column of purls on each side to separate the new lace sections from the rest of the back of the leg in stockinette.

In addition, on the first row (row 29 of chart) I picked up two extra stitches between the heel flap and front leg stitches on each side, twisted to look like an M1L for the first side (before working row 29 across the front) and M1R for the second side (after working row 29 across the front). Then decrease to get back to 56 stitches on the next round (row 30 of chart) using ssk to decrease the last back leg stitch + extra stitch for the first picked-up stitch and k2tog for the second picked up stitch + first back leg stitch. This way the extra increase/decrease just blends in with the lace pattern and isn’t noticeable.

Now just keep working in pattern. I kept going in the lace pattern, working stockinette across the non-pattern stitches at the back of the leg, until the 3rd repeat of row 25. At this point I kept working the pattern across the front, but adding irregular twisted ribbing (all knit stitches as twisted knits) to blend in with the pattern (see photos). After working another 5 rows across front in pattern, just did the twisted ribbing.

Bound off using Jeny’s stretchy bind-off (it is stretchy, but I don’t really like how it looks!)