We're now going to switch back to knitting in the round - in order to accomplish that, we need to pick up stitches along the garter stitch edge on both sides of our heel flap. Picking up stitches merely means that you will create a row of knit-able loops in an edge of your knitting where there are no loops. We create these loops in order to connect the heel stitches to the foot stitches that we've ignored while knitting the heel flap.
Ann does such a great job of explaining all this on the Knitting Fever blog, so I'm going to send you right over to her explanation. But just a couple things to note:
Now go read Ann's blog post for all the other essential information! I particularly like her tip on how to prevent a gap at the gusset.
One last thing - if you've been using the shorter 4 or 5" sock dpns, you may find that they are too short to navigate this part of the sock. You'll have more stitches than normal on the needles when you first start the gusset, but you'll be decreasing and get back to a manageable amount. If your stitches are slipping off the ends of the needles, use longer dpns until you've decreased down to the foot.
Once you finish gusset decreases and start knitting the foot, you can try your sock on (just be careful not to pull the stitches off the needles - another good excuse to have a set of longer dpns, or try slipping your stitches temporarily to a circular needle. You'll knit the foot even until 2 inches less than your desired finished length.
In the gusset decrease, when the pattern reads “Alternate knit even and decrease round to 56 (60) sts.”, do you simply repeat the entire sequence of gusset decreases? I’m confused by the term “alternate”. What are you alternating?
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Sharyn Anhalt
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