I’ve never been completely happy with sock toes (worked in either direction), and while I definitely prefer the look of a toe-up sock toe, with toe-up socks that first round of increases is always very difficult for me to work and never really looks as neat as the rest of the toe increases. With this pair I decided to experiment with my own thing to try to postpone the start of the increases by a few rows. I cast on 12 stitches using Judy’s Magic Cast-On and knit one round. I then knit the next round with the working yarn and yarn tail held together, bringing the total number of stitches up to 24. At that point I continued working the increases in the usual manner (increasing at either end of both the heel and instep needles every other round) until I reached a total of 68 stitches for the foot. After that the remainder of these socks is knit basically the same as this pair except that I knit 13 pattern repeats above the heel instead of 14 and 12 rounds of 2x2 ribbing instead of 8.

Also, in order to better balance the mosaic pattern on the instep I increased one additional stitch in the middle of the heel needle on the last toe increase round and moved one additional stitch to the instep needle before beginning the mosaic pattern on the instep for a total of 3 relocated stitches (the first 2 stitches and the last stitch on the heel needle being moved to the instep). This gave me 32 stitches on the heel needle and 37 on the instep (a multiple of 4+1 for the half-round of mosaic pattern). When I got to the heel and had worked the last round of plain stockinette on the bottom of the foot I moved the last stitch on the instep needle back to the heel needle and knit it together with the first stitch on the heel needle in order to maintain the vertical line of the pattern and reduce my total stitches to 68 (a multiple of 4 for the mosaic pattern that is continued all the way around the leg from heel to cuff with 36 stitches on the front and 32 on the back of the leg).

I normally like to work toe-up socks 2-at-a-time by magic loop, but I learned from previous experience that once I added the contrast color to the mix, I was spending more time untangling myself from all the working yarns than actually knitting, so I knit these socks one at a time. I used eye-of-partridge for the heel stitch and I bound off the ribbing using Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off.

As far as the experimental toe goes… I’m in love!