Afterthought Heels

Inspired by the Yarn Harlot's blog http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/ post dated 28 Dec 2007, and to an extent the rules of SWAP which dictate the use of new procedures, I decided to go for it and make afterthought heels on my March socks.

The sock seems to have taken less time to knit. Normally I would power down the sock leg then come to a grinding halt until I found a block of quiet time to knit the heel section which needs more concentration than the rest of the sock if I am not to end up with a hole in the heel, or a gusset on the bottom of the foot.

This sock was different. I knit to the point where the heel would go which in this case was 48 rounds. On the 49th round, I moved the stitches on the needles so I had 30 on one needle and fifteen each on the other two. The larger amount would be the heel, the two smaller ones, the top of the foot. This is my method or orienting the sock so the toe and heel fall where they should since having a toe that is 90 degrees to the heel looks bizarre and is deeply uncomfortable.

Having put the stitches into an order that pleased me, I ran a lifeline through the 30 stitches. Then I knit another entire round, and when I got half way across the 30 stitches, put a knitting marker through the centre stitch. On the next (third) round, I placed a second lifeline, below the first, again on the 30 stitches.

Then I began knitting the 48 rounds for the foot, before decreasing for the toe and kitchener grafting the toe.

Because I lack confidence and recalled that it was much easier to pick the stitches up off a circular needle cable, after I'd knit about half an inch of the foot, I added a circular needle to the lifeline row, so I had both circular cable and lifeline through those stitches.


Here is the heel-less sock awaiting the magic of an afterthought heel.



The orange stitch marker is through the stitch that was cut. Having cut this stitch I unravelled the row between the cables. This left the stitches for my heel sitting neatly on the cable ready to pick up for my heel.
Here is the start of the hole.



Which becomes a lovely big hole like this:





At this point, I had to pick up the stitches off the cable and put them onto my double point needles as I haven't perfected the art of knitting socks on circular needles (yet).

And here is the heel under construction. The yarn is rejoined in the middle of the front or back of the heel and not at the corners so that the corners are not weakened. I have arranged the stitches so that they are even, 20 on each needle as this makes them easier to divide for the heel decreases.

I knit the heel from my custom Discovery sock pattern in Cat Bordhi's book. In my case this means using the 54 stitch toe/one increase sole instructions. This knits a roundish heel which is very easy to knit, even when watching telly. The final stitches are closed using a three needle bind off.

To do the three needle bind off the sock has to be inside out. When knitting very late at night, it seems a good idea to save time and not put the stitches onto a cable but instead to try to turn the sock, with two DPN's in it, inside out. Believe me when I tell you that this is a bad plan. It ends up, as many shortcuts do, taking much longer because stitches fall off needles, needles get stuck in sock fabric, and eventually, it will be necessary to re-knit part of the heel. But of course no one would be that silly would they?

And here we have a finished sock with a heel.