Two Socks, One Week: Turning the Heel

Baseline: Sock 1, Day 2
Timeline: 105 minutes OR Steps 3, 4 and 5

Dontcha love your heel flap?? It just gets better when now you will Step 4: Turn the Heel. That's when fun-sock, three-dimensionality really starts to occur.

This next part of the process continues to be knit flat (aka with wrong side and right side). It is perhaps the most formulaic and enjoyable part of the whole sock. There's a lot of bang for your buck in the next few rows.

• First do the set up: The pattern instructions explain this straight-forward step pretty clearly. Just keep in mind, you will be turning your work BEFORE you get to the end of the round, which is kind of weird-seeming, at least as far as I'm concerned.

• From here on in this section is very intuitive. Row 1 is a knit row, aka the right side. You're going to slip first stitch purl wise (see instructions from previous post) and knit till one stitch before you get to the gap - you will observe this gap, even if you're worried that you won't. 

See, it's right there!

• At this point, decrease with slip slip knit (see this video for info on how to do this English style. If you knit another way, look it up online with your style as the keyword). Now knit one more stitch and then turn the work (weird seeming, just like in the set up). Effectively, your decrease spans and closes the gap.

What's odd about this, as mentioned above, is that you actually turn around, again and again, in the middle of a row, not at the end. It's likely to feel wrong - unless you're familiar with short rows - but it's the thing to do.

• Once you do turn around, you'll be on Row 2. At this point, you're going to slip one stitch purl wise and then purl until one stitch before the gap. The decrease stitch on this side of the work (the wrong side) is p2tog (see this video for info on how to do this. If you knit another way, look it up online with your style as the keyword). Again, the decrease stitch spans and closes the gap. Then, purl one more stitch and turn.

Keep on as such till you have 16 remaining stitches on your needle and the final 2 rows each end on a decrease stitch. You'll actually finish at the end of a purl row, ready to start the gusset set up on the right, or knit, side.

Here's what it looks like when the baby heel takes shape...

Once you've done a few more rows you get to this point:

Here's what it looks like on the wrong side:

And finally, stitch markers waiting, we're just about ready to set up the gusset...

If you want to know my least loved part of making a sock (not that it's hard), it's the gusset set up. This, we'll discuss in the first half of the next post.