Ask anybody why they have not knitted socks and you get the same answer. The heel. It sits there in the middle of the pattern looking like a trapdoor. People put the whole project down rather than walk towards it.
I asked three of our sock knitters about the heel this week, expecting to come away with a recommendation about which one to learn first. I did get that. It is further down. But Olga said something that reframed the whole question. I want to start there instead.
The heel is not the hard part. Not being able to picture it is
Olga has knitted a great many socks. When I asked her what actually goes wrong at the heel for beginners, she did not talk about stitches at all.
"I had no sense of direction when you've just got a fully written pattern without diagrams," she said, about learning it herself. "So it's hard when you get there - which direction am I going? I was reading patterns, but it was like, am I on this side? Am I on that side? And I was just going around the wrong way."
Then: "Once you can visualise it and you see what's happening, it all comes together. The penny drops."
That is not a knitting problem. That is a problem with instructions. A heel is a small piece of three-dimensional engineering described in a paragraph of text. If you cannot picture the shape you are building, following the words correctly still gets you somewhere strange. The stitches were never the difficulty.
Once you can visualise it and you see what's happening, it all comes together.
So the fix is a pattern with pictures
Olga's advice to anyone starting socks is not about heels at all. It is about which pattern you choose.
"I love Summer Lee," she said. "When people come into the shop, it's like, go to Summer Lee, because I love her visuals. It's easy to see and it's right there."
She means I'm So Basic Socks by Summer Lee. It is on Ravelry and runs to a great many pages, most of them photographs. Olga wishes she had had it when she started. "I persisted and I sat there with the little baby socks trying to do it, but it was hard work, because I didn't know what was coming where."
Videos do the same job. Olga points people at the Crazy Sock Lady's tutorials. They cover the same heel on a 23cm circular, on magic loop and on double pointed needles. That way, you can watch the method you are actually using rather than translating from another one.
If you take one thing from this post, take that. Before you worry about which heel to knit, find a pattern that shows you the heel in photographs. It is a bigger difference than any choice of technique.
Summer Lee's The Sock Project and her I'm So Basic Socks pattern - both built around exactly this idea.
The two heels you'll meet
Nearly every sock pattern uses one of two families. They are built differently and they fit differently. Both of our top-down knitters chose the same one.
Heel flap and gusset
You knit a flap back and forth at the back of the heel, turn it with short rows, then pick up stitches along both sides of the flap and decrease them away down the foot. That triangle of decreases is the gusset.
It is more fabric and more steps. It is what Olga knits every time, because of how it sits on a foot with a high instep. "It hugs your heel at the back and it's just a really good fit, especially for the instep."
She is refreshingly unsentimental about how it looks. "They don't look as pretty," she said, "but it's on your foot. You're not going to be going around parading your foot. It sort of hugs it."
Janine gets the same result from a different direction - she knits Helen Stewart's socks partly because "for the most part she does a proper turned heel with a good gusset, so I find her socks fit really well."
Short row heel
You build a cup at the back of the heel out of short rows, without a flap and without picking up any stitches. It is fewer steps, it is neater and it uses less yarn.
Helen prefers it. The one she knows by heart is Fish Lips Kiss Heel by Sox Therapist. "It's really easy," she said, "and that can be used for top down or toe up." That is the useful part. Once you have it, you can drop it into either kind of sock.
There is one caveat. Helen raised it herself. When I asked whether it suits a beginner, she said: "Depends how confident they are with short rows." Short rows mean turning your work mid-row and coming back, and if you have never done it, you are learning two things at once.
Heel flap and gusset (left) next to a Fish Lips Kiss Heel (right) - same job, two different shapes.
Which should you knit first?
Whichever one your pattern tells you to.
I know that sounds like a dodge, but it is genuinely the advice all three of them gave. For a first pair you are not choosing a heel, you are following one - and a pattern that shows you its own heel clearly beats a better heel described badly. Learn the one in front of you, then try the other when you are curious.
If you are choosing between patterns and both are clear, then: a heel flap and gusset for a high instep or a foot you know is hard to fit, and a short row heel if you want fewer steps and a neater finish.
The best piece of advice I got
This one came up twice. It has nothing to do with which heel you choose.
Do the heel in one sitting, when you are not tired.
Helen: "When I get to the heel I think, okay, I need to do the heel all in one session, so I'll make sure that I have time to do it and also that I'm not tired. Particularly with a short row heel you're counting quite a bit. If you do half of the heel and then come back a few days later, sometimes you forget where you're up to."
Olga organises her knitting around the same rule. The foot and the leg go in her bag and travel. The heel does not. "I've got to sit down and do the heel, because I don't want to be on a bus or somewhere where I'm talking to someone."
So the heel is not a difficulty to be overcome so much as a job that wants a clear half hour. Give it one.
Do the heel in one sitting, when you are not tired.
When it goes wrong
The usual first-heel problem is a small hole or a slack, gappy stitch where the heel meets the foot, at the top corner of the gusset. Almost everybody gets it.
Olga's answer is the one I would want to hear as a beginner. "You can darn it in at the beginning," she said, "and then later on you want to perfect it, and you'll find techniques for picking up a few extra stitches. But that comes on. You don't want to bombard them with too much."
Sew it shut, wear the sock, learn the tidy version on the fifth pair. Done is better than perfect. A darned corner inside a hand-knitted sock is not something anybody is ever going to see.
What she does not do is tell people to rip it out and start again. If the sock fits and it is closed, it is a sock.
And no, you don't have to knit both socks at once
Second sock syndrome is real. Knitting two at a time on one long needle is the usual advice for beating it. All three of them have tried it. None of them do it.
Helen was the blunt one. Is it better, or just a different kind of pain? "I think it's a different kind of pain. For me a sock project needs to be really, really easy, and having two balls of yarn and magic looping two socks at once, for me that's not an easy thing." She would rather knit one after the other. She has a finished sock at home waiting for its pair, so she is not preaching.
Olga sees people attempt it constantly. "I've had a lot of people come into the shop doing two at a time, and it's like, good luck." Her objection is practical. Your hands are everywhere, and it stops being portable. Portable is the entire point of a sock.
But she has a much better trick. It is the most useful thing in this post if second socks are what stops you.
Stagger them instead. Knit the first sock as far as the cuff ribbing, then cast on the second and work its ribbing straight away, so it is sitting there ready to go. Do both heels in the same sitting. Then you always have one sock travelling with you and one waiting. Neither of them is the dreaded second one. "It feels like I'm doing two at a time," Olga said. Two projects at different stages, one needle each, no juggling.
Her other confession is one every knitter recognises. The socks get finished; the ends do not. "They might take three months or three years to get the end sewn in. I might have a day where I need to finish some projects, and I'll pick up six pairs of socks, and all they need is two ends to be woven in."
Some quick answers
Which sock heel is best for beginners?
The one in the pattern you have chosen, as long as that pattern shows it in photographs. If you are picking from scratch, a heel flap and gusset suits a high instep and a short row heel has fewer steps - but only if you are already comfortable with short rows.
Why is there a hole at the corner of my heel?
It is the gap where the picked-up stitches of the gusset meet the stitches you set aside. Nearly everyone gets it on a first pair. Darn it closed from the inside, wear the socks and learn to pick up an extra stitch there once you have a few pairs behind you.
Should I knit both socks at once?
You do not have to. None of the three sock knitters here do. If second sock syndrome is your problem, stagger the pair instead - cast on the second sock and knit its ribbing as soon as the first one's is done, so the second sock is never a fresh start.
Do I need to reinforce the heel and toe?
Not if you are using a sock yarn with nylon in it. All three said no. They do not do anything extra. Helen is still wearing socks she knitted five years ago. Reinforcing thread matters more for a pure wool sock.
Can I use the same heel on a toe-up sock?
Some heels work in both directions and some do not. Fish Lips Kiss Heel by Sox Therapist works either way. That is part of why Helen likes it. A traditional heel flap and gusset is written differently depending on the direction. Follow a pattern written for the way you are knitting.
Come and turn one with us
The heel is much easier to learn beside somebody than out of a paragraph. If you can get to the shop, bring your sock to the Sisters' Help Clinic and we will sit down and go through it - and if you have been stuck at the heel for a while with the sock in a bag, that is exactly the thing to bring in.
If you have not started yet, how to knit your first pair of socks covers the yarn and the needles, and top down or toe up covers the other question everybody asks. Our 4ply sock yarn is here whenever you are.
Much love and happy making,
Debx
