Heel Help with DPNs

6 Responses to “Heel Help with DPNs”

On February 21st, 2008 at 6:58 am adrienne in the bellybutton of california said:

marlene;

i will try and help. i learned how to knit circularly with 4 dpns and always hated it; so bear with me.

for the lace, just divide into two pattern repeats (22 sts) per needle.

for the heel, you will just need to move some “instep” sts. you will be using a total of 6 of the instep sts plus the 33 official heel sts when you work your short row heel (if you follow the pattern). i think the easiest way here is to put markers to show you where the heel sts start and end and then you can divide the 39 sts onto 2 needles and leave the remaining “instep” sts on their own needle.

after the heel, you will need to move some sts back to the instep. at this point, you might want to keep all the instep sts on one needle and divide the sole sts onto 2 needles

On February 21st, 2008 at 7:21 am Marlene Steger said:

Hi Adrienne -

That helps a lot. I’m very mathematically inclined, but for some reason this was just escaping me, I guess becasuse it’s a new type of heel for me.

Your comments and those from others are making me wonder if I’m missing out on something by only doing socks on DPNs. That’s how I learned from someone in a LYS, so that’s all I’ve done.

Maybe it’s time to give circulars a try. I use them for other things, just never socks…

Thanks again.
Marlene

On February 21st, 2008 at 8:58 am Monet said:

I knit my socks on DPN’s, that’s how my BFF taught me because that’s what she uses.

She told me a few helpful hints that I use when knitting socks and it makes it, I think, a bit easier and you also do not have those dreaded ladders.

Divide your stitches onto the 4 (or 5) DPN’s that you are using. Then, as you knit around, I knit one or 2 stitches from the next DPN onto the current one that I am using, and continue doing that each round. That way you move your stitches between the needles and they are tightened automatically and you don’t get the ladders.

Then, when dividing the stitches off for the heel, I use the same principle. I have 2 DPN’s holding the instep stitches and then use 2 DPN’s to hold my heel stitches.

Once the heel is done and I’m ready to continue on to the foot, I just have to bring all the DPN’s together again, still following the same with knitting one or 2 stitches from the next needle onto my current one.

I made the Medium with 66 stitches as well, but I only used 33 stitches for my heel…just a personal preference. I also left 9 unwrapped rather than the 7, only because it fits me better that way.

Does that make sense??? I can see it in my head but sometimes it doesn’t come across as well.

Monet

On February 21st, 2008 at 2:24 pm happystasher said:

I too knit with 4 dpns and usually always do a heel flap. What I like to do when I get to the heel — whether it’s a flap or a short row heel — is to put my instep stitches on a circ and let the stitches “rest” on the cable part. This gives me a little more flexibility to work on the heel part and it doesn’t stretch out those stitches on the ends as much. Plus, it’s still easy to transfer those stitches back to the dpn when I’m ready to knit the foot. Like Monet, I did the small heel (33 sts) on the medium sock and it came out perfect for me and I have a high instep. I did it this way because the medium heel instructions - the numbers threw me for a loop and I was too impatient to read all the heel comments and figure it out. But by the time I got to the comments and the light dawned on me how I coudl do it, I had already done the heel and it fit so I didn’t frog back.

I hope you figure it out. It’s a good heel, and I plan to use this heel again, and was glad to finally make a short-row heel that worked for me. You can always knit a heel flap if you want too.

On February 27th, 2008 at 6:25 am Marlene said:

So here’s another question. I am just about done with the lace and about to start the heel (yay!) I have 22 stitches on each of three DPNs. To accomplish the “centering” required in the pattern, I would need to move three stitches from two needles to give me the 39 stitches.

Right now, the working yarn is sitting at the end of one needle (i.e., right between two 11-stitch lace repeats.) Should I “unknit” three stitches to move the working yarn and then use those three stitches for the heel? Moving three from the other end is a no-brainer, it’s the positioning of things for the start of the heel that has me wondering.

On February 27th, 2008 at 7:30 am adrienne in the bellybutton of california said:

marlene

if you follow the instructions, you can rearrange the sts as you knit. or if it is easier for you to visualize, arrange 3 11 sts repeats onto 2 needles for the heel (leaving the other 3 11 sts repeats on another needle. you can “unknit” 3 sts from the right “working” needle and add those onto the heel sts…and as you said, the 3 extra sts from the other side.

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