Do Me A Favor, Willya?

The next time I say I'm going to follow a pattern exactly, will you just say to me, "Azure Sock"? That'll do 'er. Thank you.

I have just finished constructing not one, but TWO toe-up flap and gusset heels, and I tell you: Never. Ever. Again! At least, unless I fall utterly in love with a design that can't be executed in any other way, but the Tsarina of Tsocks wouldn't do that to me, surely! And I haven't, at least so far, fallen so utterly in love with a design, other than hers, that I would knit it if I didn't like the process. I digress.

After finishing the first one, the decision on whether to do the second on on the paired circs or the expedient needles (see previous post) was a no-brainer. With stitches at strange angles to each other, multiple short-row wrap pick-ups in the same row, etc. the last thing I needed was extraneous needles and yarn flapping about as well.

When we left the sock last post, I had completed knitting in the integral gussets (completely opposite, I discover, from the top-down method, when the gussets are knitted last). In retrospect, I think I would have completed at least the straight section of the heel flap before I put the gusset stitches on the expedient needles, but it seemed simpler the other way at the time. Boy, can I be wrong!

* I started to describe this entire process, stitch by stitch, and decided I didn't want to bore you. You're welcome. Suffice it to say that the person who originally designed this type of heel was a serious masochist who must have hated knitters. *

After all that, I have to confess that I slipped the sock on, and found it to be extremely comfortable, and I'll confess that, for all the excess structure, I rather like the look of the finished product. Here are pictures of the current progress:





Just the leg and cuff to go!



Closer look at the heel.