Genius Tips
Tidy Afterthought Heels
I am sure that you’ve seen the gorgeous sock patterns in MDK Field Guide No. 27: Sock Odyssey. Fatimah Hinds has an excellent eye for design and some clever sock knitting tricks.
One aspect can be a little fiddly, though: setting up for the heel. So here’s a quick lesson.
All the designs in Field Guide No. 27 use this “afterthought” style of heel. The sock is knitted as a tube, with a strand of waste yarn placed where the heel will go. Once the tube is complete, you remove that waste yarn and work the heel on the resulting live stitches.
Tips for retrieving the stitches and knitting the heel
Pretty much any pattern ever published for this type of afterthought heel says, as the first step, to “remove yarn and return stitches to the needles.”
Tip #1: Reverse the order of these steps! Put the stitches onto needles before you remove the yarn.
Use smaller needles (two smaller short circular needles or two flexible DPNs) and place half of the stitches on each side. Count them and make sure you’ve got the right number before you pull out the waste yarn. Please learn from my mistakes and don’t forget to change back to working-size needles for the actual knitting!
There is a bit of a quirk to this. If you’ve ever done a provisional cast-on, you’ll know that there’s a tiny offset when comparing the top and bottom of the knitting.
On the side that’s below the waste yarn—that is, the rounds worked before you placed it—put the needle through the right leg of each stitch that sits below that waste yarn, and you’ll get exactly the same number you knitted with the waste yarn.
Then turn the piece around to look at the stitches “above” the waste yarn. You’ll see something slightly different: you’ll have one less “full” stitch than you put on hold, and two half stitches, one at either end. Grab the right leg of each of the full stitches, and the right leg of the half stitch at the end.
It might look a little gappy at this point, but that’s precisely the point of grabbing the extra stitch, to close up that gap.
Tip #2: Pick up more stitches.
Once you’ve got the number you put on hold safely on each needle, then add an extra stitch at each end, on both top and bottom. You’ll end up with 4 more stitches than the pattern calls for, but this helps in two ways.
Those extra stitches help cover up the natural bit of looseness you get in the corners. You’ll need to work one more repeat of the three-round decrease pattern, to get to the final required stitch count, providing a little bit of extra depth in the heel for comfort.
Those extra stitches will be connected, as you can see in the image above.
Tip #3: Skip the “corner” markers, but add another one.
The instructions for the heel mention markers. Depending on the needles you’re using, you might not be able to put standard ring-style markers on the needles. Markers at the “corner” of the heel, or removable markers clipped into the fabric, can make gaps and ladders more likely.
Instead, arrange your stitches on the needles so that the end of a needle acts as a virtual marker.
If you’re using DPNs, have half the stitches on one needle, from corner-to-corner, and split the other half across two.
If using flexible DPNs, two circulars or magic loop, split the stitches at the corners. You can easily keep track of the stitches by how they’re arranged on the needles.
There is a very good use for a removable stitch marker, though. Clip one in one of the stitches that you put back on the needles. You’ll use that to measure the heel depth.
Tip #4: Measure the heel depth.
Once the heel is complete, you can use the removable stitch marker you placed to help you measure depth of the heel, so next time you use that same yarn for a sock, you’ll know exactly how much space to leave for heel.
And of course if you’re working top-down, you’ll have a pretty close estimate for the toe length, too. (If you picked up those 4 extra side stitches, the toe will be a little bit shorter, since you won’t have that extra decrease round.)
There is a little bit of looseness still at the corner. I will tidy that up when I weave my ends in…and you should do the same. It’s not cheating, I promise!
I hope these tips help you enjoy these lovely designs. Happy socking!
Come Shop With Us
I am loving the little half sock (heel mitten?) you’ve made to demo with! On its own it would be perfect with my fleece lined clogs. Warm toes, warm heels: happy feet.
And a good way to get out different heels. That makes total sense?
Me? I tend to make a whole pair of (sometimes) ill-fitting socks!
🙂
Such helpful, clear & consise instructions. Than you.
Saved! For my next set of socks. I’ve knit one pair so far and I’m not happy with the heels. I have more yarn and I’ll incorporate these instructions into my next efforts.
Excellent post with illuminating photos. Thank you! I still am anxious about knitting socks, though maybe this, along with my field guide, will change this. A bit of amusement: At first I couldn’t figure out what that last photo was showing, seeing a toe there and, what? two incipient socks off of it? It brought to mind the inventive uses granddaughter Junebug (5) has put to with some of the knit items I made for her: she wears the knit Barbie dresses like fingerless gloves, and wears the cupcake skirt inside out. Fun to have reasons to knit! (to see what creative things the product will turn into by a fashionista of any age)
“There is a little bit of looseness still at the corner. I will tidy that up when I weave my ends in…and you should do the same. It’s not cheating, I promise!”
This was the first lesson I learned from another knitter – oh so many years ago, trying to sew up an underarm. My friend Sarah’s mom, Bev, told me, “Oh you just do whatever you need to to close up the corner and make it look right. It’s fine.”
She was also the first grown up to ask me to call her by her first name (after years of Mrs. Nelson) when I was in college. Thanks for bringing up her memory.
So very helpful. The instructions are very clear and the pictures are helpful. Thank you.
Thank you
I am delighted to see my favorite heel get some love!
Just about every pair of socks I knitted before learning the afterthought heel were just two long in the foot. And if I used a scrap to mark heel location while knitting the tube I have the same problem. So I just wing it; once I have cast off my tube, toe or cuff, doesn’t matter, I lay the sock out, toe flat, and measure the length of my hand from the the beginning of my palm to the tip of my longest finger from the toe up. (I learned this from the Yarn Harlot.) I put a marker or something on a stitch in the middle of that row and continue picking up stitches above and blow as described.
I’m not sure whether this makes perfect sense! I just know this frees me up to knit plain socks without a pattern and without pausing to locate the heel and to always have the perfect fit!
My name is Chloe and I am not a sock knitter. Still. (Tried it…did Not like it.) But I found reading these instructions to be very useful anyway, because any work around in one instance might be useful in another. Thanks Kate! Meanwhile ran across Fatimah’s Dichromatic Tee (on my way to something else). As she describes, it’s a relaxed piece which you can just throw on and go. Love that. P.S. to Anne F. I learned a lot from the Yarn Harlot too! Mainly relevant to hats. Not socks. Sorry, Kay! I am just trying to make Fatimah’s Guide relevant to Me! Not trying to destroy the sock industry.
Thank you. I’ve only tried the afterthought heel once, and it was a fiddly mess. You’ve given me incentive to try again.
Brilliant! Is there also a reason to make the afterthought heel more than 50% of the total #? Or less than 50%?
Working the heel on a few more than 50% of the stitches will give you a bit of extra depth, which can be a bit more comfortable. On less than – I wouldn’t, honestly. The afterthought heel can already be snug, and working it on fewer stitches risks making it too small/tight.
I love doing afterthought heels, but my problem begins with the sentence early in Kate’s article “with a strand of waste yarn placed where the heel will go”. I have never found a fool-proof method of determining placement. Even more concerning is how do you determine for surprise “gift” socks?
I don’t disagree, Barbara – placement can be tricky. (Perhaps I can write a column about foot length and afterthought heels?) If I’m making them for me, I always go top down, work a few inches of the foot, place the foot stitches on hold, THEN do the heel. I can then try the thing on to make sure I’m making the foot the right length before I start the toe. Making them toe-up is trickier, as you have to know both the foot length AND the length of the heel you will be working.
This was incredibly helpful! Thank you!