The Challenge

Have a look at these splendid socks by Melody Johnson to see what I decided on for my challenging pair of slipper socks. The socks are constructed from mitred squares. So first of all I had to learn how to make a mitred square. Melody explained the principle - cast on two sides of a square and decrease in the middle to form a square. Right. I grabbed some left over yarn and needles that were handy and gave it a go. There was some unraveling, but I caught on pretty quickly. I experimented a bit with the central decrease. Apparently it doesn't really matter what double decrease you use, as long as you keep it consistent.

The work has a definite wrong side:

After a couple of hours of footling, I reckoned I was ready to tackle the socks. First I followed Melody's link to remind myself how to do a provisional cast on. Aha, no wonder my crochet chain cast on didn't upzip, I was picking up through the wrong loop. Got it. I've made some progress on the socks:

 And the other side:

It boggles the mind a little, but it's not really difficult. I'm using 4-ply cotton yarn. My yarn stash is at an almost-40-year low, but luckily the cotton yarn will work, though the socks may not be as stretchy as socks knitted in wool. 

I had a look at the Fibermania blog. Melody closed it in 2014. I'm glad she left it up so we can still benefit from her patterns and information! She started a new blog, called Melody Johnson, which is here.