Knitting Rules! (27 page)
Authors: Stephanie Pearl–McPhee
Grafting takes some heat for being sort of difficult. Try to let go of this and not believe what other knitters tell you before you try it for yourself. Remember how things were in high school and don't give a technique a hard time because it has a reputation. (For a start, see the basic explanation in the glossary on
page 214
.)
There are a lot of ways to do things. Think outside the box and be in charge of your knitting. With wool as my witness, and despite how that lady treated you in the yarn shop that one time,
there are no knitting police.
Do what you want.
This standard pair of socks will fit an average woman. They are knit out of sock yarn, using 2.5 mm needles at a gauge of 7.5 stitches to the inch in stockinette stitch.
An ssk is a way to knit two together slanting to the left (the opposite way than usual). To work it, slip one, slip a second one, then put your left needle in the front of these two and knit them together.
Cast on 64 stitches and join in a round without twisting. Knit for 2 inches in “knit 2, purl 2” ribbing. Then change to plain stockinette and work until the sock leg measures 7 inches or you simply can't go on.
Heel flap: Put half the stitches (32) on one needle and continue as follows. Right side: *Sl1, K1: repeat from *to the end; wrong side: slip 1, purl to the end.
Repeat these two rows 14 times until the heel flap is a square. End by working a wrong-side row and have the right side facing you.
With right side facing, Sl1, K17, ssk (see box above), K1, turn. Sl1, P5, P2tog, P1, turn.
Sl1, K6, ssk, K1, turn. Sl1, P7, P2tog, P1, turn.
Continue in this fashion, slipping the first stitch, working to one stitch before the gap, working 2 sts together over the gap, then knit 1 (or purl 1) until you finish all the heel stitches. Eighteen stitches remain.
Needle 1:
Knit heel sts, pick up 16 sts up side of heel.
Needle 2:
K32 for top of foot.
Needle 3:
Pick up 16 sts down side of heel, knit first 9 heel sts (82 sts in all).
Round 1:
Needle 1:
Knit to 3 sts before the end of needle, K2tog, Knit to end.
Needle 2:
Knit plain to end of needle.
Needle 3:
K1, ssk, knit to end.
Round 2: Knit plain all the way around.
Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until you have 64 sts (divided 16, 32, 16).
Continue knitting plain, around and around, until the sock measures 5 inches from the picked-up stitches.
Round 1:
Needle 1:
Knit to last 3 stitches, K2tog, K1.
Needle 2:
K1, ssk, knit to last 3 stitches, K2tog, K1.
Needle 3:
K1, ssk, knit to end of needle.
Round 2: Knit to end of round.
Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until 16 stitches remain.
Graft two sets of 8.
Whenever you're knitting socks among other knitters, they come up to you and hold a mini-conference. Do you knit them on DPNs or on two circulars? Do you work decreases every row or every other row? Do you do left- or right-leaning decreases or both? Everybody has an opinion, and everyone knows the best way to do everything. I've always found that the best thing to do when people tell you how to knit (including me) is to listen with a smile, consider what you think makes sense, and then do it your way. Nobody has ever been struck by lightning for ignoring knitting advice. Occasionally there are really weird results, but never any third-degree burns.
Variation 1
Stripes
. Alternate two, five, eight colors. You decide.
Variation 2
Texture
. There's no end to the entertaining ways that you can toss cables and textured stitches into socks. I try to keep in mind two things before I go nuts. First, cables make a sock narrower, so I have to remember to add a few extra stitches or I'm making that four-year-old down the street another pair by accident. Second, I try to remember not to put the texture on the bottom of the foot. It takes only 10 minutes of walking around on bobbles to learn that one.
Variation 3
Choose a Fair Isle pattern and toss it in there
. Fudge the stitch count to make it work. Remember, Fair Isle isn't as stretchy, so don't scale the stitch count downward unless you don't especially care for the recipient and would like to pox him with absolutely beautiful warm socks that he can't get on.
Variation 4
Lace
. Choose a lace pattern from the stitch dictionary and get going. Lace is usually elastic, so if you're changing your number to cast on by a few stitches to make the lace work, you can go downward. If you're going to do lace socks, think about working the lace only on the top of the foot. Sock bottoms work best in plain, sturdy stitches.
Variation 5
Try one of the other million
(okay, maybe not a million) ways to make socks. Knit them toe up, flat, on circulars, with the “magic loop”; with a handkerchief heel, an hourglass heel, a short row heel. Try self-patterning yarns or
solid yarns; fingering or chunky weight; mohair or cashmere or good old sheepy wool. Do a zillion things, keep your eyes open, and ask other knitters what they do.
For the love of socks, heed this advice: Once you finish the first sock, always cast on the second sock right away. It improves the chances of getting a pair.
My socks start out the right size and then grow bigger as I wear them. What's going wrong?
The gauge is too loose. Go down a couple of needle sizes and try again. In the meantime, you can felt the ones you made, or mail them to my husband. He has huge feet.
My socks are doing this stupid loose thing at the ankle.
If socks bag and droop at the ankles, you need shaping. Much like bagging and drooping in humans, this can be avoided by doing a little decreasing. Knit a leg as you would normally, then, about an inch from the anklebone and the start of the heel, decrease by a few stitches. Knit the heel as you would normally, then when decreasing over the instep, work back to your original cast-on number. If this sounds like too much bother, do as I do and cop out and knit ribbing all the way down. It's a quick fix, but it works better than math some days.