short row heel | PDXKnitterati

A little bit faster and a little bit worse? Nah. Faster, maybe, but I think it’s going to be better!

The first Leyburn is done.

I really like the way this fits my foot. After all that fussing with the heel, it’s perfect!

The sock is 54 stitches, the heel is done on 31 stitches, or about 60%. I short rowed until there were 11 stitches in the middle, and 10 left unworked on either side. 9 in the middle was too far, resulting in the little balloon on my heel last time. (No pictures of that goofiness.) The leg at the ankle is slightly loose; I was trying very hard to stretch my floats on the leg as directed, but I don’t think I needed to. If I just knit in my regular way, it will be perfect. Why am I telling you all this? So that I’ve written it down, and can reproduce it in the second sock!

Here’s the toe.

I know how to kitchener stitch, but it’s not my favorite thing. I decreased at each side every other round until I had 30 stitches, and then decreased every round until there were 10 stitches total. Snip and run the yarn through the stitches, weave, and done! Hey, this method has been sanctioned in the current issue of Knitty (by the technical editor for socks, no less), so I’m good with it.

I started the second sock this morning. I love how this little twisted border takes the plain stockinette (left needle) and turns it into something magical (right needle).

Please excuse me, I have to go knit now!

I knit my first short row heel.

What I didn’t know ahead of time was how shallow a short row heel on 50% of the leg stitches would be. This made the leg of my sock a lot shorter than I intended, and the heel didn’t fit all that well, either.

What I did like was how tidy looking the heel was. I used this tutorial to do the short rows without wrapping and turning, and I really liked it. Here’s the knit side.

And here’s the purl side.

No gaps. The sock was too short, though, and I didn’t like the fit of the heel, so I ripped it out, and did the same style of heel on 60% of the stitches instead. That felt a lot better, except I short rowed too far, making the heel cup too long, and the heel ended up with a little balloon of fabric on the end. I tried to ignore this, thinking that it would be fine when the foot was done and pulling on it, but alas, it was untrue. I was all the way to the toe shaping when I finally faced this fact. Now I’m here, again.

But as is so often true with my knitting, I’m hoping that the third time’s a charm.

I did decide to put the beginning of the round at the back of the leg, where I wouldn’t have to see that I goofed the stitch pattern a bit. If you don’t see it, I’m not telling you where it is. If you do see it, it will be our little secret. Shhhhh!

In other news, Mookie has adopted the log cabin blanket. She really likes it.

And I figured out how to turn off the infra-red auto-focus assistant, which means she doesn’t have devil eyes in this picture. Yay, me!

For those of you who are local in PDX, and on Twitter, here’s a Twitter contest with some interesting prizes. The contest is on Friday, January 23. Some of the prizes are already listed on the blog, and the rest will be listed this week. Good luck!