Short Row Toes and Heels

My previous dilemma of colours from earlier posts remain a dilemma and will be the subject of a later post.

For now its socks:

These are all constructed differently. The centre one is the conventional cuff down heel flap method while the other two are both short row toes and heels. One is toe up and the other toe down and all the heels and toes have slightly different ways of working the short rows.

I tried the usual method of wrapping, a yarn-over method described in Priscilla Gibson-Roberts book "Simple Socks" and the Japanese method which Montse Stanley calls "catch" in her book "Knitter's Handbook". There is an excellent description of these three here where they are all compared.

But my favorite method at the moment is the "easy sock"pattern from Ozyarn which is knitted from the top down with a "no-wrap" short row heel.

In fact I am doing my next sock toe up with this easy method of short rowing for the toe and heel. And I shall end my sock with a 2x2 rib cast off in kitchener fashion where all the purl stitches are put on the back needle and the knit stitches on the front needle and they are grafted off loosely to make a nice elastic edge.




Here I've started with a provisional cast on and have nearly finished the first part of the short rows. The second picture just shows my pretty stitch markers which are not really necessary but give me more confidence in finding the gaps in the second part where the gaps are closed. I put a marker in each gap and then when its time to close the gap I take off each marker in turn.



The toe is complete and I'm well on the way to the heel.

There are so many links to everything you could possibly want to know about sock construction here