… or afterthought heels for the lazy and/or tape measure-less

I love a good afterthought heel. While I’ve not counted, so can’t say for certain, I’d be willing to guess that it’s the heel I use most often when knitting socks. To date though, I’ve always knit my afterthought heels in the same way — by inserting waste yarn at the point where the heel will eventually go (this is the featured technique for Jim’s Hedera Helix socks from A Year of Techniques and is also used by Julia Farwell-Clay in Heartgyle Socks from Boost Your Knitting). When the sock tube is finished, you pick up the stitches on either side of the waste yarn, unravel it, and voila: you have an opening ready to become a heel. The waste yarn makes it all very easy, but the trade off is you need to know, while knitting, where you want the heel to be. For this reason, Elizabeth Zimmerman actually called this type of afterthought heel a “forethought heel” — it requires some planning while you knit!

There is, however, another way to approach afterthought heels. You simply knit your sock tube and, once it’s finished, decide on heel placement and … wait for it … snip your sock tube to create the heel opening (gasp!). I’d like to say it was a spirit of adventure and zest for learning new things that led me to try this method on my most recent pair of socks. But the motivation was actually much more prosaic. I was knitting the first sock on a day out last autumn, and I’d forgotten my tape measure. Since my sock was toe up, it was essential that I measure to insert my waste yarn in the right spot, leaving me two choices: stop knitting for the rest of the day or carry on and give a true afterthought heel a try. Not knitting was obviously not an option!

Before we get to the bit where I take scissors to sock … why use an afterthought heel at all? It makes a vanilla sock an even better take anywhere (or, these days, Zoom) project — you simply knit a tube with a toe. If you’re knitting a sock with a repeating pattern — using self-striping yarn, for instance, or working complex colourwork — your pattern can continue in an uninterrupted tube. And, if you tend to wear holes in your heels (raises hand), they are also easy to take out and re-knit. They don’t work for every foot — some people find they really need a gusset for a good sock fit — but I find they fit my feet quite well. If you’ve not given them a try, I’d highly recommend them!

So … back to my “true” afterthought heel. Yesterday I sat down with sock, knitting needle, scissors and tape measure to hand and dived in … here’s what I did.

First, I marked my heel placement. For my foot, having the heel at 2in [5cm] less than my foot length is just about right. My foot is about 9in [23cm] long, so I placed a removable marker 7in [18cm] from the tip of the sock toe. Handily, this was at a colour change in my self striping yarn.

Then, after making sure my sock was lying flat, I took the same needle I used for knitting my sock (a long US 00/1.75 mm — I’m a very loose knitter) and picked up the right leg of every stitch under the marked row. I knit my socks using magic loop, so do the same for my heel. If DPNs are your jam, use a DPN! You’re aiming to pick up half the total number of stitches you cast on. This is 64 stitch sock, so I picked up 32 stitches.

I then rotated my sock 180 degrees and repeated, picking up the right leg of the stitch under the marked row.

Now, I had 64 stitches on my needles, with one row of knitting separating them. Just like when you work a regular afterthought heel, except instead of half a row of waste yarn between my needles, it’s just the knitted fabric.

I then snipped a single stitch in the middle of that row.

.. and unraveled one end of my snipped yarn (with the help of a tapestry needle).

And then unraveled my other end … leaving me with a 64 stitch opening, all ready for a heel!

When I knit afterthought heels, I usually just decrease at two points on either side of the heel (in the same way you would when knitting a basic toe on a cuff down sock). After some chat in the Stepping Out KAL thread on Ravelry about the fit of this sort of “wedge” heel, I decided to try an afterthought heel with spiraling decreases instead, following the heel instructions from the Heartgyle Socks …. and I have to say, I’m thrilled with the result! No boxy heel with mouse ears to wear into shape; it’s by far the best fitting afterthought heel I’ve ever knit!

Now I just need to insert the heel on my second sock, block them, and I’ll have my first finished pair for the Stepping Out KAL complete (and a new pair of socks to enjoy on my daily walk!)

Ready to give afterthought heels a try — whether it’s using waste yarn or not? You can find Jen’s afterthought heel video tutorial on the fancy new Sock Knitting Video Tutorials page. You’ll find a crystal clear photo tutorial (along with the Hedera Helix Sock pattern) in A Year of Techniques which, along with the whole Stepping Out Collection, is 15% off until the end of June when you spend over £40.00. Use the code “STEPPINGOUT” or follow this link to apply the discount automatically. And if you’ve not joined in the fun yet, there’s still over a month left to jump into the Stepping Out KAL in our Ravelry group and on Instagram using the hashtag #SteppingOutKAL.