I’m knitting yet another sock; this time, I am testing out one of the most mindless techniques for creating the heel. It’s called “The Peasant Heel”.
I was going to start a sweater, but I’m really too sad to do that. A few may remember that I showed The General recovering from his wounds? In comments I mentioned that the other cat “Biggie” (whose official name is Blackie) was doing poorly, and in fact, very poorly. Friday, I took Biggie to the vet; bloodwork revealed the red blood cell count of a dead cat. The low red blood cell count could be caused by a protozoa chowing down on his blood cells which can be cured, or it could be Leukemia which can’t be. The vet is running tests; meanwhile, we’re hoping it’s the protozoa and I’ve been giving Biggie tetracycline.
With all this going on, I deferred designing a sweater. I started a sock. As anyone who has knit (or looked at) a sock knows, the top of a sock is generally a tube. So, I cast on, worked some ribbing, and then proceeded to knit around and around until the length was “about as long” as I’d like the sock. I dropped the main yarn without breaking it.
Now I did the “key step”, I found some waste yarn and used that to knit across 1/2 the total stitches of the sock; I turned so the wrong side was facing and purled back. I cut the waste yarn, picked up the main yarn and began knitting around and around and around again. You can see the two rows of waste yarn circled in the photo above left.
When the foot is “long enough”, I’ll work the toe decreases and graft to close. Then, I’ll remove the waste yarn, pick up the stitches and knit something that looks almost exactly like another toe!
So, what’s nice or not nice about this type of heel? It fits and looks almost exactly like a short row row heel. So, if you like those, that’s a plus. If you don’t, it’s a minus. The unattractive feature is that you need to graft the final stitches on both the heel and the toe. The other negative is that generally speaking, you bind off the toe before you knit the heel. So, it’s a bit difficult to try the sock on and test how the sock fits. There are a couple of ways around this, and I’ll be coding the sockulator to explain the method I plan to use.
There are three pluses I can think of; one is theoretical and two are real. In theory, if the heel wears out, you can easily unravel and reknit. (In practice, my socks wear out under the ball of the foot. So, I don’t consider this a big plus.) The first plus is that this method of working the heel is the same whether knitting toe up or cuff down socks.
But, the real plus? The method is mindless. You just knit a tube without shaping or thinking most of the time; that’s great if you knit while commuting. Or when you are sad and constantly stopping to pet your ailing cat.
Today, that plus is the one I want.
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I’m glad to hear the peasant heel doesn’t have a funny fit. I was actually just talking about this with a knitting friend of mine, and she said the same thing. But the more data the better, because it sure looks like a funny sort of heel when the sock is not on a foot.
I’m planning to knit a pair of socks with a peasant heel this winter. (One of the socks from the Knitting Marveous Mittens books, that uses a Komi colorwork pattern that continues down the heel and toe.) I think what I’m going to do to ensure the sock is the correct length is knit the heel before I’m close to finishing the foot. That way, I know how long the heel/toe will be, and can properly try the sock on before deciding when to start the toe decreases.
I really like my basic heel flap heels with gussets. (I wear out socks at the back of the heel, and can use the extra padding from a slip stitch heel flap.) But this technique looks like a real winner for colorwork socks.
Comment by Rebekkah — 1/16/2006 @ 10:01 am
Knitting the heel before finishing the toe is one of the methods I can think of for making sure the foot fits.
The reasons I’d like to “do the math” are I don’t want to either break the yarn and have an end to weave in or to have two balls of yarn hanging while I knit the heel. With self patterning yarn, I especially don’t want to break the yarn because it interupts the pattern.
Granted, these aren’t big deals– they are matters of preference. So, my sock calculator is going to “do the math” by counting up the rows and finding the lenght based on the row gauge. That means, I’ll have to make people enter their row gauge so the program gets a *very good* estimate of the added length from both the toe and heel length. (For some other sock designs, a half way decent estimate of the row gauge is good enough so people only need to enter the stitch gauge.)
Comment by lucia — 1/16/2006 @ 10:56 am
Can I assume you have a sick cat? I certainly hope she’s feeling better. I’m taking time from my mindless knitting to per her right now-you can’t see it through the computer but your cat knows it.
Comment by Kimberly — 1/16/2006 @ 11:14 am
He’s very sick and may be dieing. It’s very sad.
Comment by lucia — 1/16/2006 @ 11:37 am
I’m so sorry about the cat’s cells. Having sick friend hurts, and letting go feels dreadful.
Comment by Laurie — 1/16/2006 @ 12:32 pm
I hope it all turns out well for Blackie. It is sad indeed considering he pulled through abandonment and found a happy home after all. I hope he survives this just as well.
Comment by basak — 1/16/2006 @ 4:06 pm
I’ve been lurking for a little while now, but I just had to delurk to say that my thoughts are with you and your poor kitty. Sending good vibes . . .
Comment by PK — 1/17/2006 @ 6:29 pm
My heart goes out to you and your dear feline friend. I truly hope he makes a recovery but whatever happens, I hope you’re able to enjoy this time you have with him. ~Sharon
Comment by Sharon J — 1/18/2006 @ 3:29 am
[...] stitches.Turn, so wrong side faces. Purl back over the stitches you just knit. (The two waste yarn rows are illustrated here.) [...]
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