How to knit a new heel on a hand-knitted sock August 30, 2010

I love knitting, particularly socks but I freely admit that I am not exactly an expert. I think, so far, I’ve probably knitted more socks than anything else – maybe a dozen pairs over the last few years.

I love the way they feel on your feet. They take a little getting used to if you normally wear shop bought cotton socks. They’re thicker and because of the way they’re constructed (ie knitted tubes) they can feel a little bumpy under your feet at first. But I find that after a few days of wear, they begin to smooth out and you get used to having that little bit of extra padding. And nothing is better in Winter then a pair of snuggly socks on your feet. I’ve not gotten a single blister from wearing my Winter boots and shoes since I started wearing handknitted socks.

The only problem is that they do wear out, especially if like me you wear them All. The. Time. I am also a complete heathen and tend to wear them on their own without shoes or slippers around the house which causes them to wear out even faster.

The first place most socks tend to wear out is the toe, just under your toes, the padded bit. It hits the ground constantly, causing friction and thus the wool/whatever wears faster than the rest of the sock. But toes are relatively easy to replace. You can darn them fairly easily. Or if you’re feeling particularly cunning, knit a new toe! Unpick the cast off end of the toe, unravel past the worn out place, put the live stitches back on the needles, knit a new toe. Ta-dah.

(No, I don’t have photos. Sorry. But trust me, it’s easy.)

The other place that ALL my socks wear out is the heel. Just underneath my heel to be precise.  Always the left sock first, always in the same place.

Is there any sadder sight for the sock knitter?

Knitting your own socks is an interesting exercise in learning about how you tend to walk. I obviously put most of my weight on my heels and walk with an emphasis on my left foot.

But, I digress.

If you are smarter than me, you’ve probably long since figured out what I’m going to show you, or given up doing heel flap socks in favour of something fancy like an afterthought heel. But for us poor schmoes still beavering away on heel flaps and gussets, here is how I managed to knit a new heel on my very favourite pair of socks, thus saving them from the bin and preserving them to warm my toes for another winter, at least.

Assemble your kit

First thing you need to do is grab yourself a copy of Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book. My copy says first published in 1938, so you have to make allowances for style and some of the little cartoons in it are definitely.. of their time, shall we say? But the text is invaluable for its history of knitting, particularly with reference to the British Isles. Plus she has a wealth of technical information to impart. Including how to knit a wide variety of sock heels, and how to re-heel a worn out flap and gusset heel.

Slightly frightening diagram

Second thing you will need is a small ball of wool, if possible leftovers from making your sock, if not, get something that will make a nice contrast. Remember, you are knitting a whole new heel, so you need enough to do about 40 – 50  rows of knitting, depending on the size of your heel flap.  My heel flap worked out at about 36 rows, before I turned the heel.

You will also need a crochet hook and a set of 4 double pointed needles. And a blunt tapestry needle for grafting and darning in the ends of your wool. I used a set of 2.5 mm needles because that’s what I used when I knit the sock in the first place. (If you want your sock heel to last longer, using a smaller set of needles is a good idea as it makes for a tighter fabric, apparently.)

Step One

In the book she talks about cutting away the heel stitches completely, but I was too cowardly to do that. So instead, I grabbed a crochet hook and my ball of mending yarn and began picking up stitches at the place where the sock leg ends and the heel flap begins.

I made a long tail of yarn, which I threaded through to the inside of my sock, leaving the main ball on the outside.

This is REALLY important because otherwise when you finish picking up your stitches, your ball of working yarn will be trapped inside your sock, rendering it totally useless.

Take your crochet hook and insert it into the first stitch in your heel flap.

Right side

Wrong side

Wrap the tail of yarn around to make a stich and pull the stitch back through, making a loop on the crochet hook.

Looping the wool round the hook

Nice neat loop, ready to become a stitch

Leave the loop on there, and move onto the next stitch in the heel flap. Repeat until you have a nice neat row of loops on your crochet hook.

These will become the stitches for your new heel flap. You want to try to match the number of stitches in your original heel flap, if possible. I ended up with 38 stitches which seemed to match up with the measurements of my original heel flap.

Now, transfer the stitches from your crochet hook to a DPN:

You now have live stitches but we’re not quite ready to get started. You could start knitting now but you’d end up with a flap that was only attached to your sock at one end, and you then have to stitch/graft it toyour sock on 3 sides.

Boring! Especially when there’s a sneaky and fairly easy way to knit so that your heel flap is joined to your sock at the sides.

If you look back at the diagram from MT’s book, you’ll notice that she has 3 needles in play, 2 holding gusset stitches.  Basically, you need to pick up stitches for the gussets. You can use the same method I used above with a long tail of yarn and a crochet hook. Or you can do as I did and find the existing gusset stitches and just slide your needle through them.

It’s not as pretty but it’s quick and gets the job done. When I was finished I had: 38 stitches on the first needle (the heel flap stitches) and 16 stitches on EACH of the gusset needles. Remember you have TWO gussets, one on each side of the heel flap.

You now should have all the stitches you need to start knitting.

Step Two

Now comes the easy bit. You’re going to re-knit the heel flap – the bit that comes down over your Achilles tendon – joining it to the sock at the sides as you go.

Look back at the pattern you used to knit your sock in the first place. In my case Froot Loops from Knitty. If it uses a fancy stitch for the heel, double check your numbers to make sure they fit any special requirements for that stitch.  E.g. my pattern calls for a repeat of 7 stitchs repeated 4 times (28 stitches) plus 1 slipped stitch at the start (29 stitches) plus 2 extra stitches on the end (31). I had 38 stitches on my needle, which works out beautifully, just adding in an extra repeat of the main pattern. Does that make sense?

Once you’re happy with your numbers, just start knitting the heel flap as per your pattern instructions, up until the last stitch.

When you get to the last stitch on your main needle, you’re going to knit (or purl) it together with the next gusset stitch.

I was purling through the back of the loop in this shot. I am SMRT.

You are basically going to be working back and forth across your main needle, combining in one stitch from the gusset at the end, each time.

This is about 6 rows in. See the way it joins at the side?

This has the effect of keeping the numbers of stitches on your main needle the same, while binding your heel flap to the sock.

See the nice new row of gusset stitches forming at the side?

Keep working back and forth like this until you have integrated ALL your gusset stitches on both sides. What you end up with at this point should look like this:

And the side stitches again

Step Three

Now, you’re going to turn the heel. Use the instructions from your pattern. That’s all you have to do, you have no gusset stitches left to combine, you just need to make the little roundy pocket for your heel. Do whatever it says in your pattern.

I used Sock Innovation to calculate my numbers for my short rows – Cookie A. includes a very handy chart in the introductory chapters which gives you the magic numbers you need.

I love this bit, it's one of my favourite parts of sock knitting!

Step Four

You’re now ready to bind your new heel to the sole of your sock. There are a number of methods you COULD use to do this. Kitchener’s stitch would work well, you could pick up stitches across the sole of the foot and do a three needle bind off.

Or you could do what I did and cast off your stitches and just sew the flap down.

Just weave back and forth to join them together.

Bish, bosh, done.

Weave in any loose ends and check the rest of your sock for holes or weak places. I’ve learned the hard way that once the wool starts to thin it won’t be long before it will just dissolve, leaving you sad and holey.

Once all your mending is done, put on your new old socks and dance around, feeling smug and thrifty! With your slippers on, obviously.

Note to self: must buy slippers

And there you have it.

I hope that was reasonably clear and at least a little bit useful. MT’s condenses all this into about two sentences and it took me ages to figure out the hows and wherefores of it all and I thought there may well be someone else out there facing the heart break of trying to figure out how to salvage the wreckage of a pair of beloved socks.

Do please let me know if it’s useful or not, or if there’s anything that is completely bamboozling. I’ve never written a knitting tutorial before and have found it a lot more difficult than the sewing ones.

Sarah

Screwdrivers, skirts and sadness January 5, 2010

There’s not much sadder in a crafter’s life, than finishing a project you were excited about, trying it on and going “oh…”

By which I mean to indicate that I finished my 6 gored skirt and it’s a bit meh. It’s not bad, it’s not the worst thing I ever made, it’s just not… quite… right.

It’s still a little loose round the waist, despite several hours of surgery. Not an exaggeration. I unpicked each of twelve seams, re-sewed them, tried it on, re-pinned and re-sewed using the  first seams as guidelines, cut the old seams off, tried it on again, re-sewed, re-cut…. you get the idea.

It’s not fitted enough. Because of the way the gores work, the skirt has a fair amount of fullness to it – I think that’s the right word. It’s meant to be loose and swishy. But it’s loose in the wrong places. I want it to skim down over my waist and hips and then flair out to be all swingy at the bottom. It doesn’t.

And the colour, which I loved yesterday, today feels all dingy and drab, like a maiden aunt.

The worst part? It’s all my own fault, because I drafted the pattern. I can’t blame poor instructions or the pattern company conspiring against me with sizing issues or any of that. Because it was my own pattern.

Sigh.

Anyway, that’s the sadness part out of the way.

I also wanted to show you why a screwdriver should be your new best friend.

My machine’s been running a bit funny lately, making lots of disturbing clunking noises. I broke no fewer than five needles on this project and they were all jeans needles. The thread was breaking every five seconds and I couldn’t backstitch or anything.

After cursing and throwing a massive hissy fit, it was time to get down to brass tacks. Or in this case, steel screws.

Screw driver a-twirling

I whipped out my screwdriver – the one that came with my machine – and tried to follow the instructions in the manual for my machine. After ten minutes of trying to unscrew the needle plate following the instructions in the manual, I realised that there was just no way it was coming off, if I followed the instructions and didn’t think for myself.

Lo and behold, depsite the fact that it doesn’t actually mention this in the instruction book, the only way to remove the needle plate on my machine is to take off the lightbulb cover that sits directly above it, because otherewise there isn’t actually room to get a screwdriver in to take out the needle plate screws.

See, no mention of removing a light bulb cover. It all looks so easy in the drawings. GAH.

Once I figured that bit out and got hold of Jake’s amazing magical screwdriver with a million changeable heads, taking off the needle plate was a piece of cake.

Avert your eyes, naked sewing machine!

Really embarrasingly dirty cake.

Turns out there’s a really good reason why my machine was groaning and grumbling at me and it’s because I am a neglectful sewing machine owner. The feed dogs were totally clogged with lint, there was a big piece of thread hooked around something or other inside the move-y uppy downy bits (technical language, I know, hold onto your hats, folks.)  and the bobbin holdy bit (shuttle and thread race, I think) was thoroughly disgusting.

Got an old (clean) children’s paint brush and carefully dusted everything. I didn’t oil anything because I’m never entirely sure where to put the stuff and knowing me I would end up putting it somewhere really stupid! Then reassembled everything carefully. There were no small screws( leftover so Douglas Adams clearly knew nothing about sewing machines, though he was in every other way a wise man.)

That done, the machine sewed beautifully and I could finally finish my hem. Gah.

The moral of this story is get to know your screwdriver and the inner workings of your machine. If you rely on something to do a good job for you, take care of it and make sure it has what it needs to work properly.

And don’t always trust instruction manuals.

Now, here are some pictures of my finished skirt.

Green, corduroy, six gores and a zipper. What's not to love? I just don't know...

Orlaith took this photo. I guess the skirt's not as bad as I think? It looks almost jaunty in this picture.

And this is what happens when you let a three year old have a go at doing a photo shoot.

The last photo is included just to really puncture any sense of self-importance I might consider developing. And now I have crackers and cheese to eat and a three year old who wants to read Fantastic Mr Fox… again.

If you decide to make your own 6 gore skirt or have a sewing machine tale of woe, leave us a comment or drop us a link-y. We love to see pictures of the stuff people make!