Did you miss me? I kind of missed myself on #needleworkmonday last week and I still have not see half of all the fabulous tiny outfit entries of our contest. But as so often I had a lot of headaches which held me back (do you hear this, stupid migraines, go away!) and when the head was ok, I was completely occupied with making Christmas gifts… and I cannot even write about this as my loved ones read my blog.
But besides sewing for Christmas I also explored a new very interesting knitting technique: a sock heel construction.
During the less worse headache days I wanted to knit a bit but as you can imagine my concentration is very low in these moments. One reason why I mostly knit easy stockinette cardigans which do not need a lot of counting or focus. But this time my eyes fell on a sock I started this autumn and which I then forgot about because I (again) could not remember how the heel is done 😱🤣. Despite the headaches I suddenly developed a strange ambition to tackle this heel and to finish the sock. (Relax dear readers I am not a clone or an alien in the body of neumansalva-who-normally-needs-over-a-year-to-finish-socks, no its still me and so you can only admire the heel but not the finished sock.)
The pattern I used is a new one I found on ravelry and it was advertised to me as adventurous but easy: sounded good to me. Even better the pattern is free, its called Elaine's Happy Heel and it really made me happy.
Till now my meagre sock experience includes exactly one heel technique, a heel with flap and gusset done with short rows. I know for prolific sock knitters this is laughable easy, but for me it means pulling out books or search the internet how it’s done and then knit very concentrate while writing down every tine step, so that I hopefully can replicate this heel on the second sock. "Not this time" I thought while reading through this new heel knitting technique, this time it will be easy. I imagine you, dear readers holding your breath while you expect some gruesome mistake to happen while I use this „easy“ technique for the first time. But no, it really is very easy, and I ended with a nice heel on my striped socks.
So, here is how its done. You knit the sock top down, then separate half of the stitches for the heel, the other half simply rest on the needles and wait till you have finished the heel. Now you knit the heel stitches in rows and decrease one stitch every row (and while decreasing you also slip a stitch – this is important for later). This one-stitch decrease leads to you knitting a trapezoid, the first half if the heel. Easy. Honestly.
The second half of the heel is also a trapezoid, only the other way round. In my case I started the heel with 30 stitches and the last row after decreasing has 10 stitches. Now I started to increase to again reach the stitch count of 30. And this is the clever part of the technique. The increases are done at the beginning of every row but through the slipped stitches of the first half of the heel. I picked up the stitches with a thin crochet hook and transferred them on the knitting needle. It reads strange but is super easily done. Every row of the second half of the heel relates to the corresponding row of the first heel part. I guess the images show this better than I can explain it.
After you finish the heel you have the exact same stitch count as before and you simply continue to knit in the round. Hurrah 🎉
The explanation gives the tip to mark the slipped stitches of the first heel part, so that you do not miss one, but in my typical manner I thought: pah, I am so skilled I do not need this. And other than in many of my failed sewing projects, it worked out. I guess you also could omit this step and make the technique even faster.
I am so curious if you will try this out or if you already knew this technique and only I the forever-sock-noob was in awe about the cleverness of this technique?
Thank you 
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