Laura
Like Sarah, I’ve been playing with some sock ideas, playing with cuff designs, cast ons, bind offs, sometimes working cuff down and sometimes toe up with variations that will appeal to both experienced sock knitters and those looking to become sock knitters.
A lot of toe up sock patterns use a basic Make 1 increase, a less intimidating that a short row toe for many knitters. While I can appreciate the simplicity of this design I’ve never been a fan of using a series of Make 1 increases because in spite of every effort to work the previous knit stitches loosely I find when I work these stitches they are much tighter than their neighbors. And so I decided to try an experiment; working two sock toes (on two circulars using the fabulous Magic Cast on by Judy Becker from Knitty) with just a quick variation in the increase instructions as follows:
Make One Increases:
1. knit round
2. [k1, m1r, k to last st, m1L, k1] repeat on other needle
Yarn Over Make One Increase:
1. k1, yo, k to last st, yo, k1
2. knit across making sure to twist the yarn overs so the loop is closed.
The difference being an extra length of yarn is added on the prior row via a yarn over so the stitches are not pulled too tightly. And yes, the stitches can be worked leaning to the right and left based on which way the yarn over is worked.
I’m sure some of you may have tried working an increase with a yarn over before, Sarah illustrated the increase here, but I thought that comparing the results of these two types of increasing might prove helpful. Look, the shape of the toe is less distorted in every way:
• The sides do not bow out
• the base is not pulled up into a curve
• the top is flatter
• and the swatch is a bit wider since it is not constrained by the tight increase.
I have fun with this little experiment, next time I will be more careful working the Yarn Over Make One increases with the correct slant and I think a reverse Star Toe could be interesting.




