Toe Up Sock Slog

I feel I have eventually mastered the simple cuff down sock.(five attempts!) I totally understand the ribbed heel, heel turn and decreases for the narrow part of your foot. However, I would like to know how to make toe up socks because this makes more sense to me in terms of yarn consumption. 

I have some half balls of sock yarn which are screaming out for some stripy sock action but with cuff down it is hard to decide how long to make the ankle without fear of running out of yarn at the toe. Instead I got a book out from the library, bit old fashioned, but I had a go at some new techniques from the back of the book.

This is the figure of eight cast on for the toe, it means there is no toe seam. I learnt how to do it from the book and on Youtube here.I trawled ravelry to find a toe up pattern that I thought I could try. I chose the vanilla sock pattern. It was good apart from it not being very clear where to put in the waste yarn for your own sock size. I made a template to measure a toe line and a place to stop for the heel. The template fits inside the sock as you knit.

Unfortunately, I knit the foot too long. When I added the afterthought heel to the sock; it was flapping around my toes. I drew another line on my foot template and tried again. In hindsight I needed to stretch the sock to the line I had chosen and unfurl it so it didn't go past the line. Both of these errors made the sock too long. This did, however mean that I had to frog BOTH socks back past the waste yarn because I had made them both ready for the heels to go in. 

Anyway, the second time I made the foot shorter. 

Why do I still get that ladder when using DPN's??

Can you see the new one is the one with the red waste yarn in. I was quite a way out but it has shown me where to draw the line on my foot template for next time. This had been a long sock slog - way more than I wanted - but it is good to learn new things. They really are a tester pair for using my lovely yarn soon. 

Figure eight cast on toes feel good and is great for using up little ends of contrasting sock yarn.

Each heel is different on these socks. I have found the size that is the right depth for my heel. One is too deep and one is just right.

Each cuff cast off is different. The hidden one is too tight, gripping my leg with a cast off in rib and the other one is a Russian cast off which is nicer and much more stretchy.

Twisting the second colour up inside the sock feels OK when wearing  but it does leave a gap in the stripe where you start and finish so I probably won't do that again.

I learnt a lot here. Mostly that my next ones will be a combination of all the best bits from these slog socks.

Jo xxx