One For My Fellow Sock Knitters – This Is How I Do It May 14, 2015 – Posted in: How to, Thursday This and That

Hi there. Today I have something to show to my fellow sock knitters – it’s a little trick I do and that I teach in my sock class, so nothing special, unless you’ve had to deal with these pesky holes before and want to try to avoid them. When you knit socks and have just finished the heel, you need to pick up the stitches for the gusset. This requires picking up one stitch into each selvedge stitch you created on the heel flap. I cheat a bit when I do this to eliminate the problem of holes on either side of the heel. Let’s have a look:

I pick up the stitches as usual, except for the last one.

For the last one, I skip the selvedge stitch and look for the regular stitch in the row below – see the beige one with the circle.

See? That’s where you want to pick up the last stitch.

When you have knit the stitches of the top of the foot, it is time to pick up the stitches for the gusset on the other side of the heel flap. Look for the corresponding stitch on this side and pick up there, not in the first selvedge stitch.

See? The arrow shows the little gap that is made by skipping the first selvedge stitch. When you are done that, you pick up the rest of your stitches as you would.

This way, there will be virtually no holes between the the heel flap and top of the sock, and the slightly larger gaps are closed neatly on the next row. This is how I do it!

Dear non-sock-knitters, please forgive the lack of information for you today, yet this is something I have wanted to share for a while.

Happy Knitting, as ever!

– Mona