If you haven’t watched Roberta Rose Kelley’s video tutorial on making toe-up socks on the knitting machine, watch that first.  I’m only going to be talking about how I made the split toe.

(I apologize for the quality of the photos, the lighting in my house is pretty bad)  When you’re turning the toe, divide your needles into thirds.  The outer third is going to be the big toe.  The inner third is going to be your short rows, where you’ll be decreasing and then later increasing stitches.  About two-fifths or halfway into the decreases is when you’ll be starting the split.

As in the video, start the yarn in the center, and leave enough tail for seaming the bottom of the sock later.

Knit all the way across the toe.

On even rows, hook a row marker or safety pin onto the start of the row.  this photo shows a row marker at the split but you’ll be doing the same on the outside edge of the knitting.

On odd rows, decrease one stitch—put one needle on hold—as in the video.

Once you’ve done about two-fifths of the decreases—in this case, when 5 of the needles are on hold—put the needles for the big toe on hold.  Continue to knit across the toes, decreasing on the odd rows and placing a row marker at the start of the even rows (at the split), and count your rows.  You’ll want to knit the same number of rows on the big toe.

It’s going to end up looking something like this, with a cascade of row markers (or safety pins!) at the split.

To give the split a little bit of shaping, you can decrease one stitch on the last two even rows.

Work the increases as in the video.  After you’ve worked back the two needles you decreased on the split, hook the nearest stitch marked by the row markers onto the last working needle before each even row.  You’re seaming together the side as you go.

Once you’re done with the increases and have all the marked rows seamed in, take the needles for the big toe off hold and knit across.  Put the needles for the small toes onto hold.

Place a row marker (or safety pin) at the start of each row, odd and even.  Knit out the same number of rows as you did for the small toes.

On the last four rows, decrease one stitch per row.

Increase those stitches as in the video, then work down your row markers and hook one stitch in at the start of each row.

That’s pretty much it.  Once you have all the rows seamed in, knit across and start knitting up the body of the foot, as in the video.

This is still a work in progress, and will likely be refined with each pair of socks I make.  Any suggestions for improvements?