Okay, so I didn't have time to finish explaining the heel the other day, but here is the rest of it. So far we have the heel flap done, but we have to "turn the heel." Basically we need to make it continue perpendicular to the heel flap, so that we can knit along the bottom of the foot now rather than up and down the leg part. That is confusing. Pictures will clarify, I hope.
This is what we have so far:
To get the heel to "turn" we need to do short rows. A short row is when you only knit part of the row (making it shorter than a whole row). Again, I think it's going to make some more sense with pictures. We want to start with a purl row. We ended our heel flap with a purl row, so we need to knit one more row. So S1, K31 one more time. Now we are ready to start turning the heel. For this row, we will again S1 (slip 1) and now P16. You should now have 17 stitches on your right needle. Now, we want to P2tog. Purl two together is done the same way as K2tog, only you purl instead of knit (obviously). So instead of purling one stitch now, you insert your needle into two stitches and purl them as one.
So you now have 18 stitches on the right needle. Purl 1 more stitch (19 total on right needle). Instead of finishing this row by continuing purling, we are going to turn the work around and knit back across those stitches. This row, not knitted completely across, is a "short row."
Now we are going to again slip the first stitch (ignore where the picture says 20 stitches; it should be 19)
And knit only 3 more stitches.
On the last row, we did P2tog to decrease. On this row, we will do SSK. That means slip, slip, knit. What you want to do is slip 1 stitch knitwise. Previously we have been slipping purlwise, which I think I explained in the last post means to slip it by inserting the needle back to front, as if you were going to purl but without actually purling. Slipping one knitwise means to insert the needle front to back as if to knit, but without actually knitting. This will twist the stitch as you move it to the right needle.
So, again, slip 1 knitwise:
And then slip another 1 knitwise (that completes the "Slip, slip" part of the decrease).
Now those two stitches are on your right needle facing the opposite way than they would normally face (twisted around). You want to insert your left needle into the front of these stitches and knit them together as one stitch. This might seem confusing and like it is not different from K2tog, but because you twist the stitches before knitting them together, the resulting stitch will slant in the opposite direction than K2tog. That is the reason we are doing SSK instead of K2tog, so that it angles to the left rather than the right.
After the SSK, knit one more stitch and then turn your work around.
Next up is another purl row. Slip 1 and purl until one stitch before the gap created by stopping in the middle of the previous row (you will see it). You will have one slipped and four purled at this point.
You now want to do a P2tog of the stitches before and after the gap. This will decrease one stitch and also close up the gap left by the short row. Then purl one more stitch on this row, and turn your work.
You will continue to do this until you have 18 stitches left on the needle. So basically:
S1, P to one stitch before gap, P2tog, P1, turn
S1, K to one stitch before gap, SSK, K1, turn
And so on.
When you finish that up and have 18 stitches left, your heel will look like this:
Ta-da, your heel is turned! I will let you digest this before moving on to the next step, which is the gusset.
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