I’ve added “Fleegle’s
heel” to the list in my electronic Organiser. Have I got the link right, Anita? Fleegle is
the woman who figured out how to knit garter stitch in the round, a technique I
used for the Mourning Shawl I knit for our niece last year. I stand in awe.
And I’ve also made a note there of where to find the advice
on stretchy bind-offs (=in the comments for Sunday, 5/2/12). Thanks for that.
Barbara, I had the wit to search LibraryThing just now, before
logging on to Amazon – I find I have the Gibson-Roberts “Simple Sock” book, and
will certainly look at it today. The scan of my shelves on Sunday clearly
wasn’t very thorough. Your very kind remark about the blog has produced a
lasting glow, here in Drummond
Place
Janis, I agree utterly about the tedium of knitting the wrap
with the wrapped stitch. It’s tolerable for a few rows when one is lifting the
back of a sweater, but wouldn’t do in a heel.
But the short-row heel I knit (Patternworks $1 sometime in
the ‘90’s) doesn’t involve wrapping:
n
Knit the heel flap.
n
Knit to the centre of it, k2, ssk, k1, turn.
n
Slip 1, p5, p2tog, p1, turn.
n
Knit to 1 st before the gap, ssk, k1, turn.
n
Purl to 1 st before the gap, p2tog, p1, turn
And so forth. Each decrease, ssk and p2tog, takes in that
extra k1 or p1 after the decrease from last time, plus the stitch from the
other side of the gap which one might have expected to wrap, but didn’t. The
unwrapped stitch from beyond the gap winds up on the bottom of the decrease,
remembering our useful rule that the stitch the needle enters first, for any decrease, winds up on
top. I am not clever enough to figure out if that’s why wrapping is
unnecessary, but I wonder.
By now, I could easily devote the rest of 2012 to
sock-knitting, to test all these ideas. And it’s a thought, once the two
madelinetosh projects are done. People wear socks, there’s no doubt.
Speaking of Amazon, as I did above, we have just received
the catalogue for the Leonardo show which we didn’t get to see in London
If you change your mind about Lucy Neatby's book, Get Knitted (http://getknitted.com/acatalog/More_Books.html) stock it for £14.50 - post free I seem to remember!
ReplyDeleteYes - that's the correct link, Jean. She also has a blog post about avoiding the little holes when you move from the heel to knitting the leg (when toe-up), which I find absolutely invaluable.
ReplyDeleteBest stretchy cast-off is Jenny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off. Works wonders and is pretty easy.
Hi Jean, with all this enthusiasm for different heels, you could test them in miniature, or make an ankle sock and knit just past the heel. Your curiousity would be satisfied without a great time investment. Just a thought. Marilyn in Minneapolis
ReplyDeleteOr you could just do provisional cast-ons and knit heels, to be kitchenered later, onto tubes made with afterthought spaces. I had this idea decades ago and one of these days I'll do it.
ReplyDelete