Done with the toe, a standard toe knitted to 16 stitches and then Kitchenered (don't you love changing a noun into a verb?)
The stitches have been picked up and the waste yarn removed. I started out with 56 stitches for the sock. Each side of the heel should have had 28 stitches, but one side had 27. That wasn't really a problem; I simply made one more stitch on that side.
Starting to knit the heel. I worked 2 knit rounds before starting the shaping, then continued in the standard shaping technique of working decreases on one row and knitting the following row.
Of course, I had to try it on. How else could I tell when I'd knit the heel to the right measurement for finishing?
The finished heel. Not bad at all, really. Yes, there's some holey-ness at the corner of the heel, but this IS just a sample sock, right? I needed to know how it would work out just doing the heel first. From here on in, I can perfect my technique.
Here's the other side of the heel. Again, there's quite a hole there. Now that I'm aware of that, I can easily pick up an extra stitch in each corner and knit it together with one of the corner stitches. That should fix that problem, don't you think?
And the sock on my foot. It doesn't look half bad, in my humble opinion. The only problem is, 56 stitches on 3 mm needles, using dk weight yarn is a little loose on my foot. As well, both the toe and the heel measure 2" each. That's a total of 4". I made the foot section a total length of 6.5", making the entire sock 10.5" long. That's no problem if your foot is 10.5" long; mine's 9.75", so this sock is a bit too big on me. No, let's face it, my foot swims in this sock. It's a good thing it's just an experiment at this point.
So, now for the pros and cons. This would be a great heel for my socks. It fits my foot quite nicely and it's deep enough for my heel. Conversely, it's much too shallow for John's foot.
It's a great way of completing the sock without interrupting any patterning you may work on the cuff and instep as you can simply continue knitting all the way down without having to disrupt the flow of the knitting.
On the con side, other than this heel not being ideal for every foot, I can't really think of a lot of cons. Perhaps the only con, in my estimation, is that you really need to know the length of the heel and toe in order to work the main part of the foot. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with this heel yet to figure out how to lengthen or shorten it, as might be necessary.
I liked working this heel and will probably use it, but not for all the socks I knit. For John's socks, I'll stick with the standard heel and gusset shaping. I will definitely keep the afterthought heel in my repertoire, though.
Note: Sorry about the colour change in the photos. It's not the camera, it was the angle at which the pictures were taken. The sock is, in actuality, more towards the green colour in the upper pictures than it is blue, as in the latter pictures. Interesting how just a change in angle, and lighting (there's a skylight just above our bed) can change the colour the camera perceives.
So, now for the pros and cons. This would be a great heel for my socks. It fits my foot quite nicely and it's deep enough for my heel. Conversely, it's much too shallow for John's foot.
It's a great way of completing the sock without interrupting any patterning you may work on the cuff and instep as you can simply continue knitting all the way down without having to disrupt the flow of the knitting.
On the con side, other than this heel not being ideal for every foot, I can't really think of a lot of cons. Perhaps the only con, in my estimation, is that you really need to know the length of the heel and toe in order to work the main part of the foot. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with this heel yet to figure out how to lengthen or shorten it, as might be necessary.
I liked working this heel and will probably use it, but not for all the socks I knit. For John's socks, I'll stick with the standard heel and gusset shaping. I will definitely keep the afterthought heel in my repertoire, though.
Note: Sorry about the colour change in the photos. It's not the camera, it was the angle at which the pictures were taken. The sock is, in actuality, more towards the green colour in the upper pictures than it is blue, as in the latter pictures. Interesting how just a change in angle, and lighting (there's a skylight just above our bed) can change the colour the camera perceives.
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