Rows for Your Toes

Okay, actually for your heels.  But that fails to rhyme.  Let's talk about how short rows work with sock heels.

There are, of course, many ways to do a sock heel.  One of them, which may be done from the toe up or the cuff down, is the short-row heel, where short rows are worked in an hourglass shape, just like that little bit of ASCII art I've inflicted on you in the last couple of posts.  These are quite classic short rows, and if a gap-closing method is not employed, gaps will ensue, giving you a row of holes marching neatly up the diagonal line from your heel to your ankle bone.

However, the top-down flap-and-gusset type of heel also uses short rows, but does not apparently employ a method to close gaps, and yet no gaps appear.  This is often extremely mystifying to the knitter who's just emerging from the stage of needing to follow patterns and starting to think about how things are really put together: short rows leave gaps if you don't prevent them, and these are clearly short rows, but there's no wrapping, and yet there are no gaps -- how can this be?

To begin with, the question, "Why are there no gaps?" contains a faulty assumption, because in fact there are gaps.  Some patterns, such as this cute little baby sock, even use the presence of the gap as a marker, so that you work until you're one stitch before the gap, and then work two stitches together.  And that, right there, is the secret answer to, "Okay then, smartypants, how did the gaps get closed when I wasn't looking?"  As we discussed last time, gaps are caused by the fact that the stitch before the turning point is not attached side-to-side to the stitch just after the turning point; they're closed by causing that attachment to be made after all.  By working the stitch just before the gap together with the stitch just after the gap, you're making that attachment, and the gap goes away.  How elegant!

Comments

[Christine]

Oh my goodness - what an adorable baby sock! I have many friends about to have babies, now I know what to knit for them!

Thank you also for your brilliant tips and techniques. I look forward to reading more of them! If you're taking requests - I want to do a short-row heel instead of the flap & gusset type that I've always done - but I have no idea how to do it. I'll be searching tonight for tips, but if you have any, I would love to hear them!