I can’t do much hand knitting. So when I wanted to make my own socks, I went looking to see if there was any way to knit socks on the machine. Many of the tutorials I found require a machine with a ribber, which I would love to own but don’t. This technique has some promise, but you need to decide on the length of the cuff ahead of time because you knit down the back and then back up the front.
I was thrilled to find the video above. These socks are worked up from the toe, using short rows to turn the toe and heel. You do have to hand seam them at the end, but that’s much less hand work than knitting the entire sock.
I did find that turning the heel for the same number of rows as the toe—as described in the video—makes for a rather deep heel. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, but for my second pair of socks I decided to use two fewer decreases per side. And I probably should have compensated by starting the heel four rows later, but live and learn. I’m happy with the heel, anyway.
One pitfall: I didn’t get a picture of this, but on my second pair of socks I ended up with several stitches that got caught up in later rows while turning the heel and toe. Unfortunately I caught it too late to easily unknit and fix them. There wasn’t much for me to do but clip the stitches and tie the ends together and hope it doesn’t cause a problem.
You might have noticed that the toe on the lefthand sock looks a little odd. That’s because that pair is my experiment in making split-toe socks.
You see, I bought a pair of Xero Shoes right in the middle of fall because I’m smart like that*, and there’s no way I’m going to go all the way to spring without wearing them. I know, I know, people wear these in the snow and the winters we have here are wimpy, but I don’t like cold feet. I know you can buy split-toe or V-toe socks or even socks with all the toes, but I have sock yarn and I want to use it.
(Turns out most of that yarn is juuuust under the gauge range of my knitting machine. But I’m gonna do it anyway.)
I’ll go into more detail about the process in a separate post. Here I want to talk about a couple of my mistakes, er, learning opportunities.
One I already mentioned, the hazard of the previous rows getting caught when you’re coming off the heel or the toe. The lesson here is, be mindful of your knitting when you’re coming to the end of your short rows. You have a pouch of knitting sitting there right under the needles that will very happily loop up and catch when you don’t want it to. Be sure to keep it out of the way and move your claw weights frequently.
Second mistake: I started the split on the same row that I started the decreases for the toe shaping. That’s way too early. I had to stitch together and then cut about two-fifths of that distance to get them to fit right. If you’ve ever cut into something you’ve hand-knit (well, “hand” knit in this case), then you know how nerve wracking that can be. But I reinforced the seam with some stretch adhesive and it seems to be holding.
The last “mistake” was more just a source of frustration. I was using row markers to keep track of where I needed to hook the side of the toe and split back onto the needle as I worked up the increases. The problem was all that fidling in such a small area kept knocking the darn things out. I finally switched to safety pins and kept the last of my sanity.
I’ve only just finished seaming the second sock so I haven’t gotten to wear them out and about yet. But overall I’m very happy with how these turned out.
*Actually that was when I finally had the money.
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