Fish Lips Heel

Are you ready? All my sock presents are done, yay, so I started one more pair since I wasn't going to do "the Christmas thing" until after the holiday and now have time. I thought I would continue to explore different heels.

I'm knitting Queen's Castle socks which are toe up with a wrap & turn short row heel.

And this time I substituted in the Fish Lips heel which is also a short row heel but uses Twin Stitches instead of the wrap and turn.

I did the heel over 60% of my sock stitches instead of 50% which I think is used in that pattern. This gives me a higher instep and more room for the heel. If you find your socks are straining at the ankle you could try this with any short row heel.

I like it very much. I find the Twin stitch great to do even on dark coloured, fine sock yarn although it is a little more of a trick after a long day.

This is the beauty of learning lots of heel methods. I and you too, are free to sub in any of them at will, to add variety to sock knitting.

Have a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday. See you on the other side,
Deb

New to me Heel

Yikes it's coming up soon, the big day of the winter. It's sneaky. No matter how much you plan, it seems to jump closer and closer without you even noticing.

I'm on my last pair of Stash Buster socks using the Stacking Stripes method.

I'm trying a new heel which I'm loving.

This is the heel which acts as the gusset. You work increases on either side of 2 centre stitches every other round until you have doubled the back of the leg stitches. Work the increases into any pattern you like. I choose to work the increases into a K2, P2 pattern. Example: 60 sts on sock, 30 sts for back of leg, work increases until 60 sts on back of leg, total on sock is now 90 sts.

Then turn the heel using the standard V-heel short rows ending in SSK, K1, turn and P2tog, P1, turn. There is a trick, you knew that was coming right? You will get back to the original number of stitches and then have to continue to turn the heel for a couple more rows. On these rows work the SSK (no K1 afterwards) and turn. Work P2tog (no P1 afterwards) until you have your original number of sock stitches. Then work in the round again.

I have found it works great and gives a nice deep heel turning which I really, really like.

I first worked this heel using Vanilla is the New Black pattern. You might find this an easy heel too.
Cheers,
Deb

Printed Spiral Striped Socks

I'm deep into Christmas knitting. Maybe you are too. I'm knitting socks and am on my third pair and on the home stretch with the second sock. Then I'm done. Whew, before the big day too. I'm patting myself on the back as I knit (makes knitting a bit awkward).

This was the first pair.

This a printed sock yarn (Comfort) and knits up beautifully. I had a second ball but didn't want to do exactly the same thing so I decided to Spiral Stripe it and see what happens.

It's the same printed wool but striped with navy. One stripe in printed wool and one stripe in a navy solid from my stash. I'm so happy with this. It changes the effect of the printed wool so much.

I used the same method as the Stash Buster Socks  which uses 3 colours but here I used 2 colours and only the switched colours in one spot. I've written about the technique in another blog which I call Spiral Stripes. In one sock I changed colours at the side of the sock and on another sock, in the middle of the back of the leg. It didn't seem to make much difference to the sock. The line you see in the centre of the photo is the dpn line which will disappear on washing.

I happen to have several 50g balls of different sock yarn in my stash. I think there will be more of these stripes socks in my future.

I hope your Christmas knitting is going well. What are you knitting?
Deb