I was in the home stretch of knitting the second Eleonora-style stocking, when I put it on to check whether the foot was long enough to start the final decreases.

And found I’d put the heel on the wrong side – the calf decreases were down the FRONT of my leg!!!!!

Aaaargh!

Much unraveling to do – complicated by the fact that for some reason, even though they were the same dye lot and dyed at the same time, two of the skeins had taken the madder slightly differently and were a shade browner.

Because I was down to half of the last brighter red ball and was concerned that I’d run out before finishing the stocking ( I would have), I was alternating rows of the brighter red with rows of the faintly browner red to avoid an abrupt transition.

This worked fine – but makes unraveling weirdly complicated because of the way I crossed the yarns at the end of each row to avoid gaps.

My only excuse is that I was working on the stocking while stuck in bed and on pain killers after foot surgery. That’ll teach me to knit while distracted!