- (exhales loudly) Let's take a deep breath.
Loom knit socks, the heel, oh my goodness!
It can be a little scary.
Someone says wrap and turn and do short rows,
like, oh, my goodness!
What am I gonna do?
I used to be all thumbs.
I would drop my stitch.
I didn't like lifting up the stitch and doing a wrap.
But now you can substitute all those wrap-and-turn heels
with this simple heel right here.
It's actually called, now don't freak-out,
it's called the German short row.
But it's actually a lot simpler on the knitting loom
than on needles.
So let's dive right in to how to do the heel.
You use that also for toes.
So have no fear.
Whether you have an adjustable loom
or a non-adjustable loom, you can do this.
We're gonna do it right now.
If you wanna longer tutorial on how to do a custom fit,
I have one for you.
Just click on the link in the description below
and we'll get that to you as well.
All right, have fun making your heel.
(upbeat jazzy piano music)
Welcome to GoodKnit Kisses.
We're all about helping you stitch your love
and love your stitches.
The heel or the toe are worked
in a technique called short rows
where you're working back and forth
instead of working in the round
using half of the number of pegs required for the leg.
So only the pegs on one long side
and then the short stationary side,
not the slider, are worked.
So beginning at the starting peg
you're gonna work around to the last peg, okay,
on the short side.
And then you don't work this peg.
You're actually going to do something called wrapping.
All right, so I'm gonna show you what we're gonna do here.
And then you're gonna work back and forth
and continue going.
This is where that number came in
that we talked about on the calculator
for the seven that was on my number.
It's 1/3 of this number here.
So I'm using 20, so I'm gonna put seven here
and seven here, and then there's gonna be six
that are not worked in between.
The best way to do that is you can mark your last pegs.
You're gonna mark the 20th peg here, half of your number.
Whatever that number is for your cast on, put that here.
Ah, all right.
And then I'm going to mark seven pegs in
for part of my short rows,
so one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Okay, and then place my stitch marker for the peg
and come here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
And these are the ones that receive those short rows.
The ones in the middle just get worked as normal.
There's nothing wrapping on here.
All right, so we're gonna begin.
And I'm not gonna show you all the pegs,
but this is how we start.
We're just going to do your knit stitch.
Starting at the starter peg go all the way down
until you get to the last peg that's marked.
So go ahead and knit yours.
Pause your video, and I'll meet you there.
All right, so for the German short row method,
instead of making the wrap and turn
where we would lift up this stitch here
and place a wrap on it and put this back down,
we're going to actually knit that stitch.
So go ahead and work it.
And then we're gonna pull our yarn forward,
and we're going to tug on that yarn, okay?
And then you can see that there is,
there are two lines here.
Let me hold this this way.
See these two lines here?
Okay, that is going to make our wrap for us.
And then we're going to work that next stitch.
Okay, so that's considered a wrap for the German short row.
Now you're just going to work all the way back
to the starter peg and do the same thing
on the starter peg.
So go ahead and knit all the stitches.
Pause your video, I'll meet you at the starter peg.
All right, we are at the starter peg.
Go ahead and work that stitch and then pull back
to do the wrap for German row.
And then we're going to knit the second stitch and move on.
So you're just going to continue working back and forth
up until right before the wrapped peg,
and then make that one a wrapped peg.
So I'm gonna work from the starter
all the way to this peg here.
And then we'll work back to here and make this one a wrap.
So you're just gonna keep going back and forth
until you have got all of them wrapped
up to these markers here, all right?
Pause your video, and I'll see you when you get there.
Okay, you've now wrapped 2/3 of all of the heel pegs.
And I've already pulled back on this one here.
This is the one that I ended on.
So now you're gonna work the unwrapped
until you get to the first wrapped peg.
So do that now.
So I'm just leaving that one wrapped.
Work this one
and that one, keep going.
And it'll just be that first marked peg.
Whoops, that stitch, okay.
So for the German one, we are just going
to actually work all these stitches over, okay?
It's gonna be a little tight.
Okay, work that over and leave that alone now.
We're gonna work on to the next one.
And normally we would lift these up
and then wrap and turn, go back again,
because we're actually gonna be expanding and increasing
so we had to decrease down.
Now we're gonna actually be increasing back up again.
But we wanna wrap and turn this one.
So we're gonna actually going to knit this
and then pull back again on these stitches
so it's actually really, really tight, okay,
not to break your yarn though,
and then work that next stitch, okay?
And then work the unwrapped until you get
to the first wrapped over here,
and you're gonna do the same.
So let's do that, okay?
(soft scraping and rustling)
All right, so this is my first wrapped stitch.
We're going to knit it, a little tight, okay,
and then go on to the next wrapped stitch.
And now we're increasing.
We're going to wrap that one again.
So then we pull back, okay?
And then we work that other stitch here,
the one that was marked.
Okay, now we're just gonna continue doing what we just did.
We're gonna work the unwrapped all the way to this one
that has the three.
You're gonna knit this one over,
and then we're gonna work this one and get three on it
and then go back.
So you're essentially doing the same thing.
You're just gonna widen it until you have got,
till you're onto the last ones
where you've got the third one on there.
And then we're actually going to work this stitch here.
So meet me back when you get to this point.
All right, see you then.
Okay, so as you can see, this is the short rows
where we had decreased and then we had increased, okay?
So this is sort of like where the heel pocket goes.
And then we're on our last stitch which is wrapped.
That's one where we had wrapped the third
and then gone back.
So you're going to work this one now.
And I've also, by the way, I've already got this one
where I had put the third wrap,
where I had knit this one and then put an extra wrap here.
So anyway, we're back over here on the short side.
We're gonna knit this stitch, all the wraps.
And then go ahead and we're gonna wrap this peg
on the opposite side.
Okay, so knit it and then pull back.
And we're gonna work one more time toward the starter peg
because we wanna do the same thing over here
and wrap this peg here.
All right, so pull back, and then we knit this stitch, okay?
And then work our way back.
All right, so pause your video, and I'll meet you back
at this point, see you soon.
Okay, so we are back to this side where the starter peg is,
and we're going to lift those wraps over.
And if these are too tight,
you can try and do them one at a time,
and that works too.
And then go ahead and do the wrap and turn
on this last one here and pulling it back.
Okay, and then you're gonna start
working these stitches as well.
And then you're gonna continue to go around
and make the rest of your sock.
Now you can also reinforce these corners here.
It's a little harder with the German short row.
The way you're supposed to do it is you go to the back
of this stitch here, the adjacent stitch
that's not part of the heel,
and you grab the previously knit stitch from the back.
And then you place it on the starter peg.
You place it here.
Now it's a little harder because when I start doing that,
it pulls this off.
But you can just be a little bit careful
and gently place it.
It's very tight, so I may have to work this one again.
Yeah, then we pull back.
Okay, and then that makes that one a third wrap there.
Okay, so now I come back to the starter peg.
And we wanna continue working in this direction,
so we're gonna go ahead and knit these over.
That one that was the reinforced and then that first stitch.
And then we work all the way down
until we get to this last peg here, okay?
And you can reinforce it.
You can go ahead and do it now,
where you grab this last stitch
and try and place it here.
But you can see that it's really hard.
So if you can't get that reinforced, it's okay.
It really is okay.
So I just reinforce the one that I can
on the German short row, which is usually that first one.
It's just a bit easier.
So you just continue working on what's the sole of the foot
right where the heel was made.
So all those stitches where the heel was made,
that is the sole of your foot.
And when you pass that last peg there
that was marking the sole, that's actually your instep.
And that's actually the top of the foot.
So you just continue knitting the length that you need
for your foot until about an inch and a half,
two inches shy of the total length that you need.
And you'll work that heel section again to make a toe.
It's exactly the same.
Then you can sew or weave the toe closed.
You can bind off first and then sew it together.
Or you can take it off with some scrap yarn
and sew it together in a grafting technique.
And that's all you need.
I hope you like the German short row.
(jazzy upbeat piano music)
Thanks for joining us today
where we help you stitch your love and love your stitches.
See you again soon.