I recently mentioned restarting my Koigu socks. Those of you who’ve seen me knit on the old sock know that it hasn’t progressed much in the last several months. I’ve been working on the heel piecemeal forever. I’ll work a bit and tear it out… work a bit… tear it out. It’s not that it’s that bad. It’s actually quite pretty. I particularly like the eye of partridge heel pattern.
But I don’t work on the sock that often, and I kept losing track of where I was. You may be able to tell in the photo that I did so even in this latest version. About halfway up the heel, there’s a section that almost looks like ribbing. No big deal, and no one other than me would probably have noticed it. The problem is that I did notice it.
I had been wanting to learn how to knit socks from the toe up, anyway, so when Rob printed out toe-up sock techniques from Knitty and brought them downstairs, I was caught hook, line, and sinker.
I’m still mid-toe, but I can tell that I already like the technique. As I mentioned in a previous post, I went down to 1US needles from the 2US needles that I was using on the top-down sock, so I did knit a gauge swatch beforehand. I’m getting 8sts/in, if you’re interested. As you may be able to tell from the photo, you actually start at about the point where your toes hit your foot, knit forward in short rows (leaving unknit stitches on either side of your work as you go) to the tip of the toe, then sort of flip over the end of the toes, and knit back up to the point where you started picking up the unknit stitches you left before as you go back. Eventually, you have a little cup of a toe, and you can start knitting in the round. I’ve just turned the toe and am knitting back out to finish the cup.