While I love self stripping sock yarn (effortless entertainment!), there is a bit of a drawback to actually using it to make socks. The heel throws everything off. So, you can do a lot of finicky cutting and measuring and keep your color sequence intact while also wasting some of the yarn, or you can just carry on and hope for the best. See on these socks here where the obvious break in the pattern is due to the heel?
It’s obvious to an obsessed person, but ye ordinary mortal might not obsessively follow color changes, so you can get by with it. However, I was dissatisfied with these results and wanted a better way. My preferred heel method is to do a small heel flap and short row heel unless the pattern absolutely won’t work that way. (We won’t talk about how many times I have failed to read the pattern properly and foresee the heel disaster about to come my way…) I like to do the small flap because in my experience most people need that little extra give over the top of their foot; feet generally aren’t perfect right angles oddly enough! So the other night I got to thinking, surely there is a way to get the end result of a small flap without having to break the yarn or kill the color sequence. Obviously an afterthought heel is going to be involved, but could I fake the flap? I decided to make a pair of toddler sized socks to test out my theory. Now, I will say up front that the yarn I used was NOT self stripping, but as I don’t have a lot of that and no yarn store in this country that I know of, I figured I could still find out what I needed to know with a semi-striping yarn. I cast on and did the leg per usual, then I began to try out my theory.
See that little triangle there? I alternated rows of increasing a stitch on either side of the ‘heel flap’ and plain knitting till I had increased 3 stitches either side; what I would have planned on picking up on a more traditional heel flap. I then did Elizabeth Zimmerman’s ‘Thumb trick’ to hold the stitches for my afterthought heel (I’m not quite ready for a true, snipped after thought heel yet!), and then for the next three rounds I decreased those three stitches. Since the sock was still tubular at this point it looked a little funny, but I held to the fact that I was going to be making this into a right angle!
Because I didn’t know how much length the heel was going to add and I didn’t have a measurement for this small of a sock handy, I decided to do the heel before I finished the rest of the sock. So, I began to undo my waste yarn, picking up the live stitches as I went. Such an ingenious trick! On an pair of adult socks, I have a chart so I wouldn’t have to do the heel right away.
I then knit a German short row heel (which I was a little less than pleased with; not sure why it turned out so sloppy), and then I was ready to graft the two sides together. Notice that I am grafting on the heel side; I figured if I had a bit of a bump, better there than under the heel. Next time I think I’ll stop the ribbing pattern a row before the heel to make it easier to graft together. Because I was grafting on to ribbing, it did leave a bump; good to keep in mind for next time.
So, there you have it, the conundrum that kept me up for an hour in the night, and I think will end up being the way to handle the pair of socks I’m planning with some self-stripping yarn. Of course on an adult sock the little ‘gusset’ will be a bit bigger, but as the principal is sound I’m confident it will turn out well. Yes, this will disturb the color pattern a bit because of the increases, but no where near as much if I carried on as normal. I need to make the second toddler sock to further refine this process, but I’m really excited to see it on a full sized sock too!
In the interest of fairness, the two personal drawbacks that I can see to this method are
a) You would have to know the foot length of your sock without the heel or toe. I have a very helpful chart for adults, but not for toddlers, so I had to do the heel shortly after passing it. And,
B) I think I would miss the excitement of the heel after the monotony of the leg. This way it’s interesting for just a few rounds before you’re back to the same old, same old, with the only difference being the smooth foot. Part of the reason I love socks is that about the time one part becomes unbearable, the next section comes up. So, I don’t think this will become my primary sock method.
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