03-20-2026

Conference is over & socks are done!

For the heel, I charted out the decreases for a typical heel turn when doing a heel flap & gusset on a cuff-down sock. I then followed that chart, but I started from the end of chart and would do increases instead of decreases. I like how this heel turn came out and look forward to comparing them to my other socks.

For the heel turn:

I knit to the center of the heel, placed a stitch marker, knit 7 stitched, RLI, knit (9 stitches worked past stitch marker, but with increase, 10 stitches past SM)

I then turned the work, mds, knit to 7 stitches past SM, RLI, knit (9 stitches worked + 1 increase)

I then worked back in forth on short rows, doing the increase 3 stitches from the last mds, and working up to 2 stitches before mds. I did this until I increased and had 30 stitches for the heel.

I got to 9 stitches per side because the heel turns I saw generally worked so that they end with 1/4 of the stitches of the circumference + 2. My circumference was 60 stitches, so 1/4 would be 15 stitches, plus 2 gets tou 17. I the rounded up to the next even number (18). So I started with 18 stitches and worked until I had 30.

After the heel turn, I had an excess of 18 stitches per side of the heel (36 in total) for the gusset. I worked back & forth, knitting the last stitch of the heel flap together with the gusset stitch, for a total of 36 rows.

Once that was complete, I then could knit in rounds of 60 stitches again. I knit 14 rounds in stockinette, then one round with (yo, k2tog) repeat to create the picot hem. I think knit 13 rounds in stockinette. I then picked up the first round of stockinette stitches after the heel and knit those stitches together with my live stitches, binding off as I went.