Hi all,
I’m making my first socks, worked cuff to toe. The toe decreases say:
Round 1: K to 3 sts before instep K2tog, K1.
K1, ssk, K to last 3 sts of instep K2tog, K1.
K1, ssk, K to end of round.
Round 2: K all sts.
Repeat round 1 and 2 until 20 (24, 28) stitches remain.
I’ll hit my 20 stitches after a Round 1. Do I still work Round 2, or go on to decreasing every round? It would only be 1 row difference, so maybe it doesn’t really matter, but I’d still like to know!
You’re right that it’s only one more row but the directions really want you to work the Round 2, knit all sts. Congrats on working your first socks! That’s a whole new world of patterns. Hope you’re enjoying working them.
That’s kind of what I figured. One of those “overthinking” moments just had me wondering.
Work the second row. An all knit row will make your kitchener stitchs a lot easier.
I’ll try to remember that for the next pair. This one ended with 4 more decrease rows, but I didn’t have any issues with grafting anyway. It was only 6 stitches per side.
Sounds like you’ve got this. Congratulations on knitting your first pair of socks. It kind of opens up a whole new world in knitting, just on rather a small scale. Now that you’ve got cuff down mastered, you might want to have a go at toe up.
That’s the plan, for sure! Toe-up makes more sense to me, in that you can see how much yarn you have left to make them as tall as you want, or add interesting stitches or something.
I prefer toe up and knit to fit. I use a cardboard cut out of a tracing of the foot the sock is to fit. When the foot of the sock will fit easily without stretching over the template I’m done increasing. I don’t use sock patterns but will find a design I’d like to incorporate. Which heel to use can be a bit of a challenge. For mostly cuff down info (most of which I personally don’t find terribly helpful for my way of knitting) Roxanne Richardson has a lot of videos on youtube. She gets really into the weeds with math I can’t follow (very math challenged, me) and with knit to fit I don’t need much math. Should the idea of toe-up, knit-to-fit interest you I could scare up a free pattern link.
I’m in GrumpyGrandma’s camp. Because of dyscalculia, I also have issues with math. I found something online called a sockcalc that’s supposed to calculate how many stitches I need based on my swatch, but I don’t recall ever using it. Swatches are a habit, and it’s a lot easier to just try the sock on as I knit it. This is totally doable even with cuff down socks. But with toe up socks, it’s even easier. I cast on about the number of stitches I think I’ll need, then keep increasing till the toe fits properly. That becomes the swatch in essence, and I don’t need to reknit the toe. And I’m careful to keep track of how I construct the first sock so the second has a hope of matching.
I rarely am able to repeat the same thing and counting rows/rounds is extremely iffy no matter what I try so I knit my toe ups two at a time, magic loop. That’s the only way they come out the same length. I figured out to start heel gusset increases when the sock reaches the front of my ankle (courtesy of a Liat Gat video for Fleegle heel if I recall correctly) and the increases stop below the knobby ankle bone. I always do faux heel flap sock heels for myself. Life’s too short to screw around with math when I could be knitting.
I get that, and I totally agree about the math. But I don’t really do math. I just knit till it fits right, then do it again. I’m one who can’t use magic loop. That extra bit of cable flopping around drives me round the bend! I use DPNs. So I always knit the second sock. But good notes make it a breeze.
You could get a 2nd set of DPNs and knit 2 socks “in parallel”–i.e. do something to Sock A, then to Sock B. A little fiddly and probably takes up too much space, but I’d do it just so they both came out the same without me having to write everything down as I did Sock A. But whatever works for you!
We may have already beat this horse quite dead, but I’ll just say one more thing for anyone contemplating knitting socks. Knitting two at a time on circs isn’t really hard. I’ve done it, and of course, the socks came out perfectly matched. But as I said, that spare bit of cable, no matter how short, simply makes me loopy. DPNs have a distinct advantage for me, and once the first sock is complete, having it to measure the second sock against means they are both the same. You’re going to be measuring the sock anyway, because you know how long you want the foot to the heel, and how long you want the cuff. Doing it twice is just as simple as doing it once. And sometimes, simply laying the sock in progress on top of the completed one is all you need to do. So if you’re thinking about knitting socks, I’m encouraging you to choose your preferred method and definitely have a go. I think you’ll be glad you did.
Absolutely! I think if I’d started knitting in the round with dpn I might well prefer them. As it is I drop the empty needle and have to run it down. The important thing IMHO is that if the method chosen works it’s the best way for that knitter.