Sunday, November 2. 2008
Toe-up socks
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One result of all of my sock knitting (aside from lots of socks for me, family, and friends, of course) is that bits and pieces of various sock yarns accumulate. Every once in a while I knit a pair of “garbage” socks to use up all the accumulated bits. I knit them helter-skelter, without worrying about them matching – they will still keep my feet warm. The only thing I make sure of is that all the yarn left-overs are of the same type so they “behave” the same way (for example when washed).
Now I have accumulated enough bits of various colors of a cotton/wool sock yarn, that I think I have enough for a pair of socks. I weighed the last pair of socks that I knit with this yarn and weighed all the left-overs and I‘m sure I have enough, but I don‘t know for sure how far I will get with half of the yarn (= one sock), how long to make the ribbed top, etc.
And I certainly don‘t want to end up with left-overs from my left-overs! So I decided that this would be a good time to try knitting socks from the toe up. I‘m sure I have enough for the feet of two socks. I‘ll knit two socks in parallel and knit the ribbed tops the same lengths, until I run out of my left-over yarn.
Here are half of my left-overs. I know the colors don‘t go together well at all, but that doesn‘t matter. I‘m not planning on wearing the finished socks to the opera!
I have never knit socks from the toe up, but I have Internet access and that is the same as having a whole treasure trove of knitting information – there are instructions, tutorials, even short videos of all sorts of knitting techniques. I found two good descriptions to help me get started – both, it turned out from Wendy D. Johnson (here and here).
I won‘t repeat Wendy‘s very good instructions. I‘ll just say that with this technique, you start by knitting the toe cap. There seem to be several ways to do this, I used the short row method, starting with a length of crocheted chain stitches – that‘s the dark blue yarn in the photo of my toe, below.
Then you knit the foot in the round (I prefer using 3 double-pointed needles) until you get to the heel, which you also work with short rows (just like the toe).
Then you continue in the round to work the top of the sock as high as you like....or until the yarn runs out. I like to work the entire top of the sock in ribbing (I think I read that Elisabeth Zimmerman liked to do this also), so they stay up better.
Here are my finished socks. As the Germans say, “Nicht schön aber selten.” (Not pretty, but unusual.)
Knitting from the toe-up was perfect for using up left-over yarns evenly – and it did impress many of my friends who had never heard of doing such a thing before – but I don‘t think that I will be using this method much for normal sock knitting....