It's a Toe

Here's what I knitted up last night.

The next stage in my sock-knitting adventures is to knit toe-up socks. Unfortunately that's beyond the scope of Ann Budd's Getting Started Knitting Socks book which has been my trusted guide so far.

I don't currently have a knitting group--I'm planning to rectify that deficiency soon--so I turned to the internet for help. Wendy's toe-up sock pattern seems to be a popular go-to guide. With the help of this tutorial I managed the slightly wonky toe you see here. One of the problems with this sort of independent learning is that it's hard to work out which bits of wonkiness are my own beginner's errors and which are inherent deficiencies of the particular method being used.

When I looked at my knitted toe last night I was disappointed with how messy one particular line of stitches looked. If you're into knitting short-row toe-up socks, it's the part where you pick up the wrapped purl stitches while knitting the second half of the toe. I'd never done a short-row toe before. In fact knitting short rows using wrapped stitches is new to me. This morning I hunted around for more information on knitting short rows using "wrap and turn". I discovered this video, "How to INVISIBLY pick up a wrapped stitch on the Purl Side". I learned that the messy appearance of these stitches is not just my problem. And I learned a technique for making it better. Now I'm going to pull out this toe and try again. Hopefully I'll go on to knit the entire sock. I'll get several chances to practise my new skills as the short-row heel is pretty much like the short-row toe except it's at the back of the foot instead of the front. That much I know.