Only with winter-patience can we bring
The deep-desired, long-awaited spring.
[Anne Morrow Lindbergh]
Yesterday, I shoveled some more snow, drew some more flowers for an illustration job (nice counterpoint to shoveling snow), and turned the sock heel with a technique I’d not tried before.
Marilyn B. commented on the Design-1 post that stranded knitting makes her socks last longer. I find this to be true too—especially if I use a yarn that felts the strands on the inside as you wear the sock—so I decided to work a stranded heel. Had I worked a heel with a flap, this would have been a matter of working back and forth with the two colors. Then I could have switched back to the red to pick up stitches along the sides of the flap and decrease for the gusset. That didn’t dawn on me until I had finished the heel turn. Duh.
Instead, I worked the heel I usually use, and did the stranding with intarsia in the round. The red yarn makes a complete round and the grey yarn goes back and forth. Once I figured it out, it wasn’t hard to do. It is like working a puzzle. I did the check because it made it easier to purl the grey back to where it needed to be. Tomorrow, the foot and toe.
Knitting, writing and other joys 
Thank you for giving me some more help with the heel. I sat down this morning and it made perfect sense following your directions. I’m ready now to start the short rows and I’ve decided if I can’t figure the color work out on those I’ll just work a double strand of solid color.
Again..thanks for the help!
When I got to the heel, I started increasing and using the grey yarn 3/4 the way around the last leg round at the side of the sock instead of the back of the sock. I worked an increase with the grey then continued on across the heel stitches in the checked stranded knitting, ending with a grey increase at the other side. My dilemma then was how to get the grey back to the other side. I wrapped it around the red, turned the work and purled just the grey sts back to where the grey started. Then I knit the red on across the front of the foot, next into the red checked heel stitches, and across the front of the sock again. When I was back to the grey yarn, I worked an increase and stranded the red and grey across the heel stitches in the checked pattern and worked the other increase. I kept repeating that process. So I was knitting the red yarn in the round but knitting and purling the grey yarn back and forth across the heel in pattern. The increases were worked only when I stranded both colors. It is like intarsia.
Once I got the hang of it, it worked out well although it might have been easier to have simply worked a flap heel instead.
This all came about because I’m using a soft yarn that wouldn’t wear as well as sock yarn so I thought it needed reenforcing. If your yarn is on the sturdy side, I’d just work a plain heel if I were you. I took the sock to a workshop this past weekend and folks loved the bit of pattern on the toe end of the foot.
I’m doing the heel on the second sock right now.
Thank you for posting the beginning of this sock. Is there anyway you could give me some more solid hints about doing the heel. I’ve done your non-stop heel method once before so I’m not quite sure how to approach this one with the color work but I’m up for the challenge 🙂 If its too involved for quick instructions, I’ll just carry on with a plain heel. Thanks!