I have been happily using my basic sock recipe for years. Last month, 2 things happened:
- I heard about Cat’s new Sweet Tomato Heel, and
- I watched Vicki’s podcast about her vanilla sock recipe.
I’ve had a sock on the needles for months. It’s been my meeting knitting project, except I’ve been busy taking notes and not much time for knitting. However, I did just turn the heel and was making my way toward the cuff. At this rate, who knew when I would get to my next pair of socks?
So I ripped this sock back to the heel and tried out Cat’s new heel. When I got to approximately where I normally start my ribbing, I tried out Vicki’s method of 7×1 ribbing for a few rounds (5), 3×1 ribbing for a few more rounds (5), then continue with 1×1 ribbing until desired height.
Finished Sock with mods
It’s amazing how much faster you work when you are trying out new things. You can’t wait for it to finish to try it on. A train ride to the city and back (an hour each way) didn’t hurt.
So, what do I think?
Eh.
Mixed results. The heel is a bust for two reason:
- The third short row didn’t fit my heel bone. But as Cat said, that can be adjusted. I could stop short of the full complement of short rows. That didn’t bother me as much as the next problem.
- Cat has you knit a couple of rounds plain in between the 3 short row segments. After the first segment, the sock is just too shallow for my high instep, and I found that those two rounds were really binding on my ankle. I didn’t notice it when I tried it on immediately after finishing the heel because the rest of the sock wasn’t in place and it didn’t sit in its normally location.
The first problem is solvable, but the second one was the clincher. This heel just doesn’t work on my foot. The whole point of knitting my own sock is to make socks that fit me like a glove, which, for a foot, is a sock. Ha!
But to its credit, I do like how it looks when laid flat!
Now, to Vicki’s ribbed cuff. That was interesting and fit well. She make hers that way for aesthetics. How my cuffs looked never really bothered me as long as they fit well and didn’t sag. So the ribbing is a wash. Just something else to tuck into my bag of tricks.
Yup. It’s been ripped. I’ve started the heel for the third time on this sock.
The yarn is 100% merino from Fancy Image, so it must mean I picked it up from Madrona at some point. And it also means that this pair of socks has a life expectancy of about 2 years. I hope it takes less than that to make them.
