Sock Tutorial - Part 3

Gusset 


Look at your fantastic sock with its heel flap and heel! You are more than half way there. 

What's coming up...
You now have a tube with a ribbed top for the ankle, and now you have to knit the tube for the foot.


 The first part of this is called the gusset - go back to look at the sock from your wardrobe - 

- either side of the foot, at the side of the heel, is a triangular shaped pattern which joins the heel to the foot - that's the gusset. It involves a series of decreases on either side of the foot, and it will decrease the number of stitches back to the number of stitches which you started with. Why have you got more stitches though? Because in a moment you're going to pick up 8 stitches along each side of the heel flap - remember knitting the 16 rows of the heel flap where you slipped a stitch at the start of each row? - this is where we now pick them up. 

 So, what are we looking at - we have currently 16 stitches on the 'cuff' needle which we haven't touched for a while, and 10 on the 'heel' needle which you've just finished knitting on, with the 2 sides of the flap having no stitches at this moment on it at all. 


Taking a new needle, insert it into the first ss at the end of the row nearest to the last stitch you just made on the heel needle as you can see in the picture...

Close up...see the larger stitches at the end of each row? These are the slipped stitches you did when knitting the heel flap. Insert the needle underneath both loops...

Yarn over...

And then as if this was just a normal knit stitch...pull the yarn through...to create a new stitch on your needle

That's your 1st picked up stitch. 


Put the needle into the next "start of row" slipped stitch, 

yarn over and pull a stitch through. That's 2. 


Continue along the side of the heel flap until you have 8 stitches. So you now will have 3 needles in play. The cuff, the heel, and now one side of the heel flap. 

8 newly picked up stitches along the bottom...cuff needle (16 sts) on the left, heel needle  (10 sts) on the right

There will be another needle needed for the other side, in a minute! 


Knit along all of the stitches on the cuff needle...

Cuff needle stitches knitted (along the bottom) - 8 newly picked up stitches to the right - heel needle at the top.

...and then you need to pick up 8 stitches as before, continuing up the other side of the heel flap - you might need an extra needle here (my set of dpns has 6 needles and the extra couple come in handy at this point!!!) but you could use a cable needle or even a normal needle, temporarily until we do a needle reshuffle. 


So you end up with 4 needles, with 8 stitches on either side of the heel flap, 16 on the cuff edge and 10 on the heel edge. 

Cuff needle at the bottom, heel needle at the top. On the right needle are the 1st set of 8 sts picked up, and on the left you have the 2nd set of 8 picked up stitches.

The use of stitch markers 


The use of stitch markers is very necessary in sock knitting - you slide a marker onto your needle in-between particular stitches and then this reminds you to perform certain actions before or after each marker. In this case the stitch markers will mark the place for the decrease stitches either side of the foot for the gusset. 


Tip - stitch markers never go on the wool, they always go on the needle. Each time you come to a marker, you just slip it from the left needle to the right and carry on.


Prepare 2 stitch markers (I use paper clips or even a little loop of another type of wool in different colours.) We are also going to reshuffle the stitches so they are back on 3 needles. 


So holding the sock the right way up (rib at the top, heel at the bottom) place a stitch marker over the top end of each of the 2 heel flap side needles, 

and slip a stitch on to the end of each from the cuff needle - this is to stop the stitch markers from sliding off

 - the white arrows show where a stitch has been moved from the cuff needle to each of the left and right heel flap needles to anchor the stitch markers on those needles. That leaves 14 sts on the cuff needle and 9 each on the 2 heel flap side needles. 


Next we are going to do a needle shuffle so that we split the 10 sts on the heel needle equally between the 2 heel flap needles. This will reduce the needles back down to 3.


So knit 5 stitches from the heel needle onto the right heel flap needle - putting 14 on that right side flap needle. 

Then move the final 5 stitches from the heel needle onto the left heel flap needle.

14 stitches on each needle. 42 in total.


Note where the 'tail' is - remember the yarn which marks the beginning of the 1st row - this should be in line with the gap between the left and right heel flap needles. Remember this gap between needles is the end/start of a row/round.


So now we begin the decreases for the gusset... 


This is what you will be doing...


Row 1- . Knit to within 3 stitches of the 1st marker - k2tog, k1, slip the marker onto the other needle knit the remaining stitch on that needle (that leaves 13 stitches on that needle), and then knit to the 2nd marker, slip it from left to right, k1, ssk2tog. Knit to the end of the round.


and I'll show you the step by step pictures.

This shows it with the work laid flat.

This shows it from the knitter's eye view

So knit up the left needle until you are 3 stitches away from the 1st marker







then Knit the next 2 stitches together...

Knit 1 and you come to the stitch marker. 

on the left needle

on the right one

Pass it from the left needle...


to the right one...

...and carry on knitting until you reach the 2nd marker - this means knitting all across the top/cuff needle...




and starting down the right side heel flap needle. 












When you get to the 2nd marker, pass it from left to right needle....

Knit 1 stitch after the marker and then, SSK2tog which is described in Part 2 - making the heel.


Continue to knit all the way down the right side heel flap needle until you are at the end of the needle...and the end of the round.


You have completed ROW 1 of the gusset. Your stitches have reduced by 2 - from 42 to 40. 

Looking at the work, you will notice that you did your decreases on the side of the stitch marker which is nearest to the heel (at the bottom in this pic) but of course as you go round the row in a clockwise direction, the decrease is done *before* the yellow marker, but *after* the white one. 


In this set of rows, every other row is a 'decrease by 2' row like row 1, and the in between rows are just a pure knit all the way round. So...


Row 2 knit all the stitches in the round


Repeat rows 1 and 2 decreasing until you have 32 stitches in total (ie 10 rows altogether.)


When you finish, make sure you end with a row 2.


Your sock should look like this...

Note that the decreases you have done create the triangular shaped gusset on each side. It looks like a proper sock! Yay!


Carry on to Sock Tutorial Part 4 to finish off the sock.