Socks are great little knits, they get worked on in bits and pieces, and suddenly there are socks. And part of the joy of knitting socks is the wonderful self striping sock yarns. You never quite know what you’re getting, so watching the color pattern evolve is fun.
Sometimes the striping pattern works into the heel shaping quite nicely, but sometimes a traditional heel flap will affect the pattern. That was the case with this blue yarn.
Blue sock
I knit it from the top down. As I was knitting the leg portion I realized that the stripes are so even, I didn’t want them to change as I knit the heel. So I worked the heel using Elizabeth Zimmernan’s Thumb Trick- she used it for mittens, too. See the white line between the blue stripes? That’s where the heel will go.
Heelless sock
No heel yet! How did I get into this situation?
When I reached the point on the leg where I would have started the heel, I used white yarn to knit across half of the sock. Then I slipped the white stitches back onto the left hand needle, and knit them with the blue yarn. And kept on knitting until I’d finished the toe. Then I went back to the white yarn, and removed it. This created the heelless sock above- there are live stitches around the edge of the heel space. I put them onto needles:
Heel on Needles
The final step is to knit the heel- it’s shaped just like the toe!
Finished Socks
Nice even stripes!