Music and Afterthought Heel Sox
Tonight we rehearsed with Abbott Brothers, our band that will be playing at Altu’s restaurant on the 22nd. It is so fun to prepare! We don’t play out much anymore, although they had regular weekly gigs about 20 years ago. Imagine that, 20 years ago…
I also got to knit at my brother’s house and in the car to and from rehearsal. I had decided to see how far I could get with the leftovers from Brian’s sox (the ones I finished a few days ago). I knit a rib for just over an inch and then I’m knitting a tube until I run out of yarn. I’m doing both sox at the same time on different sets of needles.
There is less yarn than I thought, but I am sure I can make it work. When I run out of yarn I will knit toes from contrasting solid yarn (long ones, longer than usual to make these a reasonable length) and then I will use Elizabeth Zimmerman’s method of adding a heel later, which she calls an afterthought heel. You snip a stitch where the heel belongs, pick out the stitches (she uses something like 60% of the stitches if I remember right. Then you pick up the stitches on double pointed needles and knit what essentially is a toe, as a heel which is replaceable.
Dawn Brocco of Heels and Toes Gazette has a version of this heel using a round toe, with something like 6 decreases in one round and then several even rounds before another decrease round. Dawn has a pattern for this (all sizes, worsted and DK weight yarns) in the Spring 2001 Gazette, called “Truly Simple Beginner’s Re-heelable Socks.” I think it’s the Summer 2001 which has the same pattern, zillion sizes again for sport and fingering weight. You can order old issues if this interests you.
Dawn’s version uses waste yarn for about half a round where the heel will go, rather than knitting the tube fully and then snipping. I guess you end up with one more row in the body of the sock that way but I doubt it will show, and I really need to knit every last bit of yarn I can in my pair. I think these will maybe end up with tiny little cuffs.