Dude! The Eight(ieth) Time's a Charm!

I lost my ability to read pattern instructions when it came to doing the yarn over heel on the Twinkleberry sock pattern, so I had to search the internet for help.

I sweated a couple of bullets looking at the instructions that popped up, but fortunately for me, I came across this link:

The easiest way to do a short row heel

This woman has saved me untold hours of sock heel making misery. I have recommended her two or three times already.

Thanks, Kaityvr!

It took me about 3 tries to learn the method, and a few more to make smaller holes and learn to recognize where I need to start knitting and purling the next slipped stitch.

If you try it, do your best to keep the yarn on the end loops close to your needle when turning and starting the next row. Also, keep count of where you are on each row. One easy way to figure out where you lost your place is to use a piece of yarn as a lifeline before you start the heel. Then you can count the number of rows you have worked to figure out how many slipped stitches are supposed to be on each side of the heel.

These double lines showed where I picked up the bar at the end of the row, which clued me in that I needed to knit that stitch, and pick up the bar for the next one.



I have had to frog back several times to make a decent heel with this sock, and having a lifeline saved me untold amounts of trouble.