Sockitude Part Deux- I must be nuts!

Dearest Darling Readers,
Foolishly I went to bed last night before reading my emails, and didn't think to cut off the sock requests in time.
THE ORDER DESK HAS CLOSED.
Now I have 18 people for whom I have promised to make socks. Yipes! But I WILL do it. And I will guard myself not to get a sore arm...so time will tell when this project will end.

In the meantime I am experimenting with Afterthought heels. As you may recall, these are knit last and are REPLACEABLE should the heel develop a hole, which sometimes happens even on the daintiest footsies. I wanted to make it easier to do this heel by knitting a place marker as the sock was being knit. I read somewhere about waste yarn and didn't quite know for sure if I was doing it right, so I brought my work to knitting where better more experienced knitters could hold my hand, so to speak.

Here's how this worked out. The place to make the heel is knitted with waste yarn, across half the stitches, and then PURLED back across the same waste yarn, leaving the ends dangling. Then the sock yarn is picked up again and the rest of the sock is knitted. Later or AFTERWARDS the waste yarn is unpicked and the live stitches are put on the needles to make the heel. Genius. I didn't invent this, but now I know how to do it and this will make all those future socks so much more durable.

This is my basic sock pattern, a tube with a toe, no frills, other than the use of multiple hand dyed yarns. Ultra Fussy because ends have to be knitted in as I go. I am already bored with this and will put it away and start in on the requests.
And now, your daily Dawg

OK it's finished...