FO: Afterthought Heel Socks

Pattern: a mishmash
Size: large… slightly too large for my size 10 1/2 feet
Yarn: Knitpicks Simple Stripes (75% superwash wool, 25% nylon), fingering weight, 231 yards/50 gram skein (I don’t remember the color, and I don’t think that Knitpicks sells this yarn anymore)
Amount of yarn: less than 2 skeins
Gauge: didn’t bother to check
Needles: size 1 clover bamboo dpn
Started/Finished: Nov 2006/March 3, 2007
Washing Instructions: Machine wash, lay flat to dry
Recipient: me (after all, no one else would be able to wear these huge things!)

I hated knitting these socks. I don’t really love wearing them, either. I don’t mind looking at them, though, since they are colors that I wear a lot. I bought this yarn over a year and a half ago. I was still a relatively new knitter and didn’t want to invest a lot of money in socks yarn. Now, after all this time, I can honestly say that was a bad decision. I can understand why this yarn was so inexpensive. I feels… well, cheap. It doesn’t have any of the qualities of the great sock yarns such as Socks that Rock or Cherry Tree Hill.

To make matters worse, I had SUCH a difficult time knitting these socks. I started off following the Two at Once, Toe-Up Socks pattern (free from knitpicks). I really like the method it uses to start the toes - very clever. But, the directions it gives for where to place the afterthought heel didn’t work for my foot. It ended up about 1.5 inches earlier than where it needed to be. I kept knitting, telling myself that I was crazy… that it would work. Finally, I decided to follow the directions to finish the heel and see if it was in the right place. It wasn’t. I then had to graft together the gaping hole that I created when I set up the stitches for the afterthought heel. Then, I had to decide what I wanted to do. Should I try the EZ afterthought heel? Should I try a short row heel? Should I do a little research and figure out how to do a heel flap heel in reverse? In the end, I decided that I didn’t really love the yarn and that I might as well give EZ’s method a shot. When else was I going to feel so comfortable cutting stitches to make a sock heel? Certainly not with $20+ sock yarn. I cut. I undid stitches. I picked up stitches. I knit the heel. It was WAY too big and weird. I ripped. I knit a new heel, decreasing on every row instead of every other row. I fits almost perfectly, but I would definitely cut the stitches a bit closer to the toe next time (maybe .5″ closer… not much), and I would also use less stitches to make the heel. Because I decreased on every row, there is a huge ridge on either side of the heel. Whatever. By the time I finished I no longer cared. I did the exact same thing on the second sock, and called it a day.

I would definitely try afterthough heels again (using EZ’s method found in Knitting Without Tears). I felt like a rebel cutting into my knitting. :)