How to Make a Good Heel on a Knitting Machine
Making a heel on a knitting machine can be a particular challenge. Learning to turn a heel on a knitting machine is an advanced technique and can be a bit frustrating at first. Key to learning how to make a good, strong and reliable heel on a knitting machine is all about having the right pattern, preferably one written by an experienced knitting machine operator. After making your first pair of machine knit socks, knitting heels on a knitting machine will become much easier and will allow you to make a pair of socks in a matter of hours.
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Things You'll Need
- Yarn (center wound or on a cone)
- Scrap/waste yarn
- Yarn needle
- Knitting machine with ribber
- Latch tool
Instructions
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Cast on 64 stitches for a 2-by-2 ribbed heel. Knit 50 rows and latch up the ladder stitches between each knit stitch, placing the top-most stitch on a corresponding key. Drop your ribber bed as you will not be needing it until you pick up stitches after making the knit heel.
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2
Knit 12 more rows and take the last 32 stitches on your right and put them on a stitch holder or scrap yarn. Knit the remaining 32 stitches for 22 rows.
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Thread a yarn needle with scrap yarn. On the last row you knit, unravel nine stitches by pulling the yarn strand slowly. Take these nine stitches off and pull through the yarn needle with the scrap yarn. Cut off and tie into a loop. Do the same on the opposite end. Hang a claw weight under both sets of these stitches.
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Place the first scrapped stitch onto needle 10 and knit one row, doing the same for each of the nine stitches you have slipped off onto scrap yarn. Repeat on the other side. These are the short row stitches that will form your heel. This will make nine rows in total.
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Pick up the last nine stitches along the left side of the 20 rows you knit previously and then nine stitches along the right side. Push the ribber up one step and hang the 32 stitches back onto the machine onto the ribber needles.
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Set your machine for circular knitting according to your machine's instruction manual. (Usually you have the carriage set for R to L knitting on the ribber and L to R knitting on the machine bed.) Knit up to 50 rows for the instep, or more depending on the size of the wearer's foot.
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Shape your toe by decreasing two stitches per row on the right-hand side for the right sock and the left-hand side for the left sock. Cast off when you have 10 stitches left by threading in waste yarn. Run the carriage without the yarn to release the sock from both beds. Take out the waste yarn and graft the toe shut.
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Tips & Warnings
Don't expect this heel to look like a hand knit heel --- it will be unusual looking for the novice sock knitter but will work terrifically in the sock's structure.
Investigate the many forms of knitted heels. This is a modified gusset heel, but you can also try a standard short row heel, peasant heel, round heel or an afterthought hand-knit heel.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit legs in colorful socks image by Photosani from Fotolia.com
