Ask the Knitters

Dear Knitters,

I have two socks that I'm working on that I now have a problem at the heel break.  Sock #1 has 84 stitches, with a pattern repeat of 12; sock #2 has 72 stitches with a pattern repeat of 8. Both of these are easy enough to split in half, but that is not appropriate for the pattern break.  Do I make the heel larger than 1/2 or smaller than 1/2?

I considered doing an equal half, but I can't figure out what to do with the left over pattern on each side.  If I continue the pattern beyond the heel and onto the top of the foot, which I would like to do, what do I do with the left over stitches on each side?

How do you recommend splitting for the heel, when the stitch pattern doesn't fit evenly in half the original stitches?

Thanks for your help,

Heel Splitting in Helena

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Comments

[April]

You could split it evenly and work those extra pattern stitches into the heel flap. That way you get a cute little detail on either side of the heel flap and can still bring the stitch pattern down the foot.

[Diane]

I don't know if my math is going to work for you or not, but...
With Sock #1: you have 84 sts total. With me and I don't know your shoe size but with me - my normal heel is 32 sts (16 each needle). If that would work for you to have 32 heel sts - you could have 5 pattern repeats (5 x 12 = 60) Which would leave you with 24 sts to divide for the heel (instead of 32). The 24 sts would only be 8 less than the 32 (only 4 sts each side of the heel - which I don't believe would take away from the sock in appearance if you used those 4 sts as part of your pattern repeat - would look pretty wrapped around like that.

Sock #2 - again I am using the 32 heal sts on this one too - you would have enough to do your 8 st. pattern repeat 5 times with the 32 left for the heel (5 x 8 = 40 / 72 - 40 = 32) So at least for me and my size that would work out to my normal heel stitch number.

In either sock I agree it would be pretty to work the extra pattern sts into the heel and not have the heel larger than usual.

[Julie]

I'm not sure whether you're planning to extend the pattern onto the heel flap or just want to make sure the pattern works on the top of the foot after you've done the heel, but you can still do the usual heel flap on half of your stitches. You could center your pattern on the heel flap, and turn the incomplete patterns on the edges into garter stitch or moss stitch, perhaps. You would have to do the same on the instep, so on sock #1 you would have 3 pattern repeats across the instep, bordered by 3 stitches on each side -- stockinette to blend with the sole stitches, perhaps. Just make sure you are at the end of a repeat when you start the heel, so the transition to the heel/foot flows well.

On sock #2, you'll have 4 pattern repeats centered on the instep, with 2 border stitches on each side.

[Tina]

do the smaller ammt of stiches on the heel flap. just because the flap is the shorter number of stitches, doesn't mean you have to decrease to that many when you pick up on the gusset.
The heel will be very stretchy, so don't worry about it being too tight

[Mikki]

I you have a narrow heel, the lesser of the two. I you have a wider heel, the greater?

[Melissa]

Julie and Mikki have the right idea. If your heel is narrow, you might be able to just use fewer stitches to turn the heel, and everything will work itself out. (Just be sure to stop working gusset decreases when you have the right number of stitches left!) If your heel is wider, use more heel stitches.
But if your heel is standard-width, I'd set up the pattern so it's properly situated on your instep (you could center it, or do mirror images on the socks so it's all the way on one side for one sock and all the way on the other side for the other sock) and turn the heel over half the stitches. As for the extra stitches, I'd be tempted to just do them in St st, so they blend in nicely to the sole stitches and nobody will ever know.
As for the heel, I tend to do heel stitch rather than patterned flaps. But if you want to carry the pattern down the heel flap, by all means do so. You may be able to use the "extra" stitches to work, say, half a pattern repeat on each side. I'd be tempted to maybe use any stitches that can't easily be worked in pattern as a garter stitch selvedge.

[Sarah]

For the sock with 84 stitches, you would have 3.5 repeats for the top of the foot if split in half. I tend to just split the nubmer in half and shuffle stitches around. In this case, I would have somthing like K3, 3 pattern repeats, K3. Sometimes the pattern has a nice purl stitch that can help the pattern flow down the foot (example. K1,P1,K1, 3 pattern repeats, K1, P1,K1).

I tend to do a plain heel flap, which has lots of room for fiddling with stitch counts. That's the nice thing about knitting - it can be very forgiving. The other nice thing about knitting, you can rip it back and try again. (The other night I knit -3 rows on a sweater.)

Have fun.