Furballs' Little Corner: Toe Cap Construction

For this past month, I had been working more on socks with the encouragement from Red Heart Lovers June KAL & CAL.  Their theme for June 2019 was socks, so I went wild.  I had not knitted socks for a few years and it was really fun to pick it up again seeing it with a new eye, and of course, I need replacement socks.  The worn out holes in the toe caps are too big to be ignored lol

Usually I love to make toe up ankle socks with afterthought heel, but I could not be bother to add another yarn and weave in two more yarn tails now, so I switched to using short rows to shape the heel.  It has been fun using various ways to do a short row heel including wedging and hourglass.  Also tried out different short row techniques, German short rows, yarn over short rows, shadow wraps to name a few.  I even went on to make cuff down one too.  If I have time, I will write down my thoughts on different short row techniques and my preference in their applications.  Today, I want to keep a journal on my toe cap construction.

Furballs Simply S(h)ock (right), Thousand Eye Furballs (middle), Furballs Having Hives (left)

In general we can make the toe cap in three different ways.

The first one is the most popular one using increases or decreases, depending on whether you are making toe up or cuff down, to shape the dome of the cap. It is popular because it is pretty easy. By adjusting the rest rows in between the "action" rows, different level of roundness could be achieved.  Special cast on, e.g., Judy's magic cast on, or bind off, e.g., Kitchener grafting, techniques are needed to make it seamless. This way of making toe cap is featured in my patterns: Furballs Having Hives and Furballs Simply S(h)ock.

In particular when I was knitting up Furballs Having Hives, I noticed a problem with gap / hole forming when making the first round of directional increases. I used Judy's magic cast on to start and there is a inherited problem of first pair of cast on stitches being looser than the rest.  In normal knitting, like knitting straight up to form a pouch, usually it is not a problem and if the gap ever showed up, using a yarn needle and "spread" the excess yarn to the stitches along the cast on rows will work.

In case of making the toe cap with increases, this turn out to be a big problem and "spreading" the extra yarn around with increases seem to be more elusive. The problem is most obvious on the first round of increases because the increases are placed near to loose stitches from cast on.  So after several tries, I finally find a way to overcome it.  It might not be easier than the "spreading" technique, but with practice, it should come easy.  The most difficult part is to identify where to pick up the strand of yarn to make the increase (assuming we are doing make one and not others).

On the left in the photo above, it is constructed normally with make one right and make one left every round starting with seven stitches and up to seventeen stitches.  The yarn needle point to the gap in the first round of increases (second round overall in the pattern).  On the right is my solution to the problem.  It follows the concept of mending gaps during knitting by picking up the a strand of yarn from the row below (think about wrap and turn in short rows, same principle).  In this case, when we execute the make one and picking up the strand of yarn that runs between the two stitches, we do not pick up the strand from the current round, instead we pick up the strand from the row below from the wrong side.  Lift the strand and put on left (holding) needle.  The strand should be behind or to the back of the strand of yarn in between the stitches in the current round.  Execute the make one as normal.  Do that for all the increases in the round.  I only need to do it in the first increase round, all other rounds will be normal make one execution.

The second way is using crown or star knitting.  This is basically knitting the cap like the crown of a hat.  Still using increases or decreases, they are spaced evenly across a round.  This way of knitting also requires some types of circular cast on, e.g., magic ring cast on, or bind off.  Again the arrangement of the rest rows are used in making the steepness of the dome.  It is featured in Thousand Eye Furballs (below).

The third way is using short rows.  One can start with provisional cast on for toe up sock, or like what I used in Furballs' Shorties (below), knitted the short rows in a different manner and made it both suitable for toe up or cuff down sock without the fear of gaps at point of joining. The shape of the dome depends on how "tight" the wrap and turn's are packed together.

So I hope this will help you making beautiful sock :D  At least you can have a good start in toe up sock.

 Happy knitting :)