Sock Parade: Thoughts on Afterthoughts

Once my daughter discovered the balls of self-striping yarn she was done with plain colored socks. Done. Especially when I explained that this particular ball would make rainbows.

Rainbows

I really wanted the rainbow stripes to stay equal  widths and decided to try the afterthought heel to achieve this. Now, in case you've never tried it, the idea behind an afterthought heel is that you just knit a tube with a  toe and then add a toe where the heel should be. In this case, I wanted it so that the colors wouldn't get out of whack being used up unevenly by a normal heel flap. Also, in this case, I should call it a forethought heel because instead of making a snip at the heel once it was all knit up, I put the stitches on a piece of waste yarn to pick up later. 

If I had it to do over again, (and I'm sure with a little girl who loves hand knit socks, I will) I might try the snip method to really be able to place the heel exactly where it would fit the best. As it is, these are just a smidge too long because I kept feeling like the foot looked too short.

In the end I can't say that I love how the afterthought heel sits compared to a good ole' heel flap heel, but it's a nice trick to know when I want to get all OCD on some self striping socks.

Oh. And smidge too long be damned, she loves them.