I knit my first short row heel.

What I didn’t know ahead of time was how shallow a short row heel on 50% of the leg stitches would be. This made the leg of my sock a lot shorter than I intended, and the heel didn’t fit all that well, either.
What I did like was how tidy looking the heel was. I used this tutorial to do the short rows without wrapping and turning, and I really liked it. Here’s the knit side.

And here’s the purl side.

No gaps. The sock was too short, though, and I didn’t like the fit of the heel, so I ripped it out, and did the same style of heel on 60% of the stitches instead. That felt a lot better, except I short rowed too far, making the heel cup too long, and the heel ended up with a little balloon of fabric on the end. I tried to ignore this, thinking that it would be fine when the foot was done and pulling on it, but alas, it was untrue. I was all the way to the toe shaping when I finally faced this fact. Now I’m here, again.

But as is so often true with my knitting, I’m hoping that the third time’s a charm.
I did decide to put the beginning of the round at the back of the leg, where I wouldn’t have to see that I goofed the stitch pattern a bit. If you don’t see it, I’m not telling you where it is. If you do see it, it will be our little secret. Shhhhh!
In other news, Mookie has adopted the log cabin blanket. She really likes it.

And I figured out how to turn off the infra-red auto-focus assistant, which means she doesn’t have devil eyes in this picture. Yay, me!
For those of you who are local in PDX, and on Twitter, here’s a Twitter contest with some interesting prizes. The contest is on Friday, January 23. Some of the prizes are already listed on the blog, and the rest will be listed this week. Good luck!