Baby Socks: Garter Stitch Short-Row Heel
September 23rd, 2004 at 7:57 am (socks)
Apparently the only thing I can finish these days is baby socks :) Alex’s socks are done! Yay! Every member of my immediate family has handknit socks now.
Here’s a finished shot: 
(note that you can’t see all the ends I haven’t woven in yet because they are artfully hidden)
Basic pattern:
I used Cascade Fixation for these. Cast on 32 stitches. K2P2 for a while. Then did Lucy Neatby’s garter stitch short-row heel on 20 stitches (approx 60%). This was a fun and easy heel to do. It looks a bit "poofy", but in baby socks I think that’s a good thing. You do wraps with this type of heel, but you don’t knit into them so they are super easy and really close up the holes along the diagonal of the heel. I went down to 6 heel stitches left before "turning" and doing the other half of the heel. The toe is also from this same article. It’s just a garter stitch toe with "normal" decreases. I followed this plan:
R1: Dec rd (k1, ssk, k to last 3, k2tog, k1) twice
R2: Purl Rnd
R3: Knit Rnd
R4: Purl Rnd
Repeat R1 & R2 until you have 12 stitches left (ends with Dec rnd)
I was going to graft the toe, but was at work when I finished it, didn’t have my tapestry needle with me at the time, so had the brilliant idea to do a three needle bind off. I turned the sock inside out so the slight ridge is on the inside. Since Alex will never really walk in these socks I don’t think the small ridge at the toe will bother him.
The article on garter stitch heels suggests to use a different color the first time you do it, and I wholeheartedly agree. It really helped to figure out what was going on as I followed the instructions. It’s easy to memorize too - I did the second one without really looking at the directions again.
Jill said,
September 24th, 2004 at 1:27 pm
I put the socks you made Erin on her yesterday. She left them on for about 2 min! I need to put shoes on over them to get her to keep them on! I’ll try and take a picture and send it your way over the next couple of days.