With my sock explorations to-date, I’d used the heel-flap-and-turn technique taught by Ann Budd in her book Getting Started Knitting Socks (Interweave, 2007).
With this latest pair of socks, I decided to attempt the short-row heel technique.
I relied on instructions at Eskimimi Makes, “Short rows for the sock enthusiast.”
With short rows, you gradually build up the middle of your knitting while leaving the outer stitches on your needles. With each pass, you increase by-one the amount of stitches on each side that are not being knit. You continue this way until you’re only working with the innermost five or six stitches in your row.
You then reverse the procedure and resume those stitches one at a time with each row, starting with the stitches closest to the middle and working back out to the edges.
With the heel flap and turn, the knitter needs to pick up stitches along the length of the heel flap: forming a gusset by decreasing one stitch on each side of the instep every other row. With the short-row technique, there’s no need to pick up stitches to make an instep for the socks.
My conclusion after attempting this technique is that I really like the look of short-row socks. I’m not entirely ruling out heel-flap-and-turn, but I plan to continue with short-row heels.
These socks are knit with Plymouth Yarn’s Neon Now in yellow-green and blue. I used Crystal Palace Yarns’ Fizz Variegated in blue-green to create fringed cuffs.
Cross-posted to Ravelry
No comments:
Post a Comment
Robust debate and even unusual opinions are encouraged, but please stay on-topic and be respectful. Comments are subject to review for personal attacks or insults, discriminatory statements, hyperlinks not directly related to the discussion and commercial spam.