It's a gorgeous day for working in the yard, but I feel soooo lazy... it's also a good day to watch TV and knit.

I cast off the first colorwork sock this morning, early, and immediately cast on the second. For the sake of completeness, I should note that my inspiration is the Spot Check Sock, by Beth Parrot, in Carol Sulcoski's "Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn." I'm even using similar colorways, although in different brands of yarn, which I picked up at the Sock Summit last year. I'm not following the pattern, though, as I prefer to do socks toe-up, with a short-row heel.

I seem to have finally gotten the technique for short-row heels down. In order to eliminate holes in the sides of the heel, one must not only wrap the stitch outside the short row on the way back, but also on the way out, and slip the first stitch after the wrapped one. That may be a hard instruction to understand or follow, which would explain why I haven't been able to understand the written instructions in the patterns I've seen. It's fiddly, but it's better than having holes in an otherwise substantial sock.