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The challenge of heels, unless you’re a veteran sock knitter, is simply trusting the instructions. The most typical shaped heel involves short-rows, which to my mind are not intuitive. You knit most but not all the way across the heel flap; you screech to a halt before you reach the end of the row; you go back the way you came; you screech to a halt again as if you’re trapped. And so on. It works out beautifully in the end, but that’s not necessarily obvious as you do your hesitation waltz back and forth.
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| Left to right: The "toe-shaped" heel, T-shaped heel, and the quick heel. |
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I was mesmerized watching frequent PieceWork contributor, Donna Druchunas, in our video studio reproduce three different heel styles derived from Lithuanian socks. One of them involved short-rows (with some differences), but two seemed remarkably fresh and original. Especially the T-shaped heel. It’s hard to explain in words, so I’ll just say it involves no short-rows and no decreases. How can that be? It’s like an origami knitting trick.
Another heel style involves creating a little triangle at the bottom of the heel flap, simply by decreasing at the ends of the rows. Simple, simple. Probably the simplest heel I’ve ever seen, short of a tube sock which doesn’t really have one.
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Holes are encouraged in the Lithuanian short-row heel. |
But back to Donna’s short-row heel. I like to call it the “toe-shaped” heel, because the toe and heel are worked identically in this particular sock – one of three pairs whose instructions are included in the DVD. Because of this, the heel sticks out at the back in a jaunty way, at least until you put the sock on, at which point it behaves like a perfectly little cup. It’s knitted entirely in garter stitch, which makes it cushy and somewhat wear-proof. The short-row turns do not involve that special wrapping motion that prevents holes; instead, the holes are encouraged and are part of the design and charm.
The various ways of turning heels have been documented endlessly in knitting literature, so I was surprised to find methods I’d never seen before. Good clever ones, at that.
Cheers,
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