Knitting A Toe Up Sock On The Magic Loop

Hi, I'm Mary Beth Temple. And today we're going to look at a couple of techniques that you might wanna use when you are knitting a toe up sock in the magic loop technique. Now magic loop differs from working in DPNS when you're working with DPNS, which frankly is the way that I learned to knit socks. You're going to have four individual needles and you're going to manage those four needles to work in the magic loop, you're going to have one circular needle. Now, you want it to be at least 24 inches long, 29 to 32 also works and we are going to manipulate the needles so that we only have this one needle that we're using and we're gonna complete half a row at one time. We're also going to work toe up, which means the cast on is super important. We're going to make a Turkish cast on, then knit the foot, then do what's called a wrap and turn heel, knit the leg and finally, the cuff. There are a couple of reasons why people like to knit toe up socks. One is if you're knitting the sock for yourself try it on as you go, who needs measurements? When you have your own foot model right there in the house, you can try it and make any adjustments you need on the fly as long as you write down your numbers. So that when you make the second sock, you use the same math. The other reason is you can use a tool like this to sort of measure as you go. So even if you're not knitting the sock for yourself, you can take any kind of weight, any kind of yarn, any kind of needles and make a sock that fits the person. You want it to fit. One of the cool things about using a pattern that is based on your personal gauge and your preferred fit rather than a pattern that gives you a specific size or a specific style of sock is you can use any kind of yarn that you want today. I'm going to use a soft Super Wash Merino in a worsted way. I'm hoping that using a worsted weight gives you something to look at. You'll be able to see what I'm doing and it's going to give me a sock that's nice and soft to wear and it's up very quickly. The first thing I'm going to show you is the Turkish cast on. There are several cast ons that are appropriate for a tow up sock, but I like this one the best, especially if you're going to work in magic loop. So let's jump right into the cast on. I did mean to mention that when you're knitting a sock, no matter what weight yarn you're knitting in, you want a tight firm fabric because that makes the sock more durable. And not only do you wanna knit your socks? You wanna wear them too? I am knitting a little bit looser than I might normally if I was making a pair of socks to wear again, mostly because I don't wanna be on the struggle bus when I am knitting on camera and knitting at that somewhat looser gauge makes it easier for me to show you what I'm doing. But I'm using a size seven knitting needle on this particular project. Again, you're going to do what works for you, but you're looking for a nice firm fabric. The first thing I'm going to do is make a slip knot. Now I'm gonna leave myself a decent size tail so I can weave that in later. And I want you to remember that the slipknot does not count as a stitch. We're using it to anchor the Turkish cast on. So I'm gonna put that on my knitting needle and tighten it up. Now that I have the slipknot in place, I'm going to go ahead and wrap my working yarn from back to front around both needles eight times. Now, my pattern is telling me that eight stitches is what I want to start with, if you're doing a different pattern, it might be a little bit different, but the technique is the same. So I'm using my left hand, I'm right handed to kind of hold that slip knot in place. I'm going to take my working yarn from back to front and wrap it eight times. So that's one, two, three, four, 56, seven, eight. Now I'm going to take these eight stitches and turn them into 16. So following along again with my specific pattern, I'm going to knit across the stitches on the top needle. So I'm pulling my bottom needle out because I'm going to knit across the top first. And my pattern is telling me to put a stitch marker after the first four stitches. So I'm going to knit one, two, three, four, place my marker. Now I'm going to knit the other four, one, two, three, four. Now I'm going to, I personally like to get rid of the slipknot now cause I don't need it anymore. You can leave it until later if that makes you feel more secure. Now, I have done half of a round. This is where people get confused. So here are my eight stitches across the top And now I have eight on the bottom 12345678. So to complete my round, I have to also knit those stitches. So for magic loop, we're going to pull the needle so that the stitches are up on the tip. Make sure I have my working yarn here. I'm gonna pull my working yarn so I can knit across the other half of the round. And I'm going to knit the eight stitches that are on the back needle. These were originally sitting on the cable five, six, seven, eight. So here is my first round of this pattern completed. I have taken my eight wraps, those eight stitches that I cast on because I'm working in magic loop. I have turned them into 16 stitches. So to complete the round at this point, I need to work on all 16 stitches, not just eight. So we have 12345678 on one needle tip, 12345678 on the other needle tip. So now again, I'm gonna set up so that I can work in the magic loop. So the stitch marker is marking the stitches that belong on the front needle. I'm all set to go here. So I'm up here, there's my stitches all ready to roll. I'm gonna pull the back needle and start knitting. Now, this particular pattern has me doing some increasing. So to do this increase, I'm going to work a knit front and back increase. So I'm going to knit in the front of the stitch and the back of the stitch before I push it off the needle So the knit front and back is a single increase that gave me one extra stitch. Now, it tells me to knit across and I'm going to slip that marker as I come to it until I have two stitches remaining. I'm going to knit front and back, knit front. Do not push it off the left hand needle knit in the back. Go ahead and then push it off the left hand needle knit one, once again, if I have knit the stitches on one needle tip, that's only half the round. So now I have to get ready and knit the other half. And I'm going to do the exact same thing I already did. I have my other stitches up on the tip. I'm gonna pull this tip. I'm going to make sure I have my working yarn because my biggest mistake that I always make when I get started in magic loop is I pull the tail yarn instead of the working yarn. Also notice I'm giving this uh first stitch a little extra tug when I switch needles in the same way that sometimes DPNS can ladder give you loose stitches between the four needles. It can also happen on magic loop between the two halves. So I like to tug that first stitch a little tighter. But now we're working our stitches on the other half of the round. We're going to knit, front and back, knit in the front. Don't push it off. Knit in the back and then push it off. Knit until two stitches remain when I have two stitches remaining, we're going to knit front and back, which will give me an increase and knit one. Now I'm at the end of the round and again, a, a thing that can help you is these are the stitches that don't have the stitch marker in the minute in the middle. So to go ahead and do the next round, the next round is simply a knit round. I'm just going to keep working in magic loop. I have half of my stitches up on the needle and the other half resting on the cable. I'm going to look for my working yarn and give it a tug. I'm going to go ahead and knit around all the stitches. So we had 16, but we added four. So now we have 20. So that was five slip the marker when you come to it. Six seven, eight, nine, 10, then I'm going to pull up my other tip, pull that tip out again. Make sure you're getting that working yarn. I swear to goodness, I pull that tail yarn all the time. It is a bad habit of mine. Don't make it a bad habit of yours. And then there'll be 10 on the other needle too. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So there we go. So if you were knitting a top down sock this area, right here. That's where that kitchener stitch seam would be another advantage of knitting toe up. There's no kitchener stitch in this. And I know a lot of people don't like to do it. So I'm going to continue along. I'm going to alternate, increase rounds with work. Even rounds. Work even is where we don't do any kind of increasing or decreasing. We just knit the stitches that we have until the tow box is the width that I want it to be. Now having knit most of the other sock, I know that I wanna get to 28 stitches. So I have two more increase rounds. This one that I'm knitting and I'll have one more after. So again, with two stitches remaining knit, front and back, net one turn the work around, pull these stitches up onto the tip, pull this needle out. Now this needle is in the front and I have a way to work. Now, my experience with magic loop tells me the more rounds you have on here, the easier it is to see what you're doing. So if you get a little tangled at the beginning, that's OK. Don't get yourself frustrated. Just go ahead and keep working your toe box until you have the width that you want. Remember to alternate an increase round with a work even round. So I'm gonna go ahead and finish my increases and then we're gonna talk about the foot. One of the benefits to working with worsted weight yarn is you don't need a whole lot of stitches to get where you're going. So I have tried on my other sock and I know that I only need 28 stitches to comfortably fit the ball of my foot. So I've done my increasing until I got to my 28 stitches. So here is the toe that I was just working on, you can see my little increases going up here. It kind of forms a wedge and here is the toe where I've already started to go ahead and work on the foot. Once again, you can see the wedge. Now, the other thing I wanted to talk about with the magic loop, you've noticed that I've got a shorter cable here than I did here. If you're new to magic loop, I would definitely recommend the longer cable. It sounds kind of counterintuitive. You might think it, it's gonna get in your way, but particularly as your sock gets bigger and takes up more space on the needle, you wanna have that little extra to finagle around with. So while this worked on magic loop on the shorter needle, I do kind of like the longer one. This is a 32 inch, this is a 24 inch, 24 inch is great for socks. But if you want to go ahead and use magic loop on any other technique in which you need to create something knitting around, you might want the bigger needle. So I'm gonna set this one aside and I'm going to work on my bigger piece right now just for giggles. I'm gonna go ahead and use my sock sizing ruler here. Now, I am not knitting, uh, the size that I normally wear again just in the interest of the time and showing you what's going on. But I've decided that I want to knit these socks for a woman who wears a size six shoe. So all I need to do watch the arrow. You want the arrow to go towards the bottom. So I'm gonna get this down to the toe and I'm gonna let it stretch a little bit, but I'm not gonna like jam it in there because that's gonna give you a false measurement and look, I'm going to lay my knitting needles flat and I'm coming right up to the size six on my sock ruler. So this is another way again, if you don't have your own foot to put your sock on, this is another way to get the size that you want when you're doing a math based pattern. So now I've gone ahead. I have knit around and around and around and gotten my foot done as far as I want it to do. The next thing I wanna talk about is the heel. There are several types of heels that you can do when you're making a toe or even a top down sock. Uh, today what we're going to look at is a short row heel and we're going to look at the wrap and turn method, short rows, means that you're not going to knit every single stitch on a specific row. And wrap and turn is a way of managing the stitches so that you don't get big gaps now because I use the worsted weight yarn and I only have 28 stitches on my whole sock. You don't have a massive heel cup here on the worsted weight, but I do have enough so I can show you what's going on. And once again, you can alter this specific sock to accommodate whatever gauge that you personally are getting. So to work on my short row heel, I'm only going to work on one half of the round. So I'm not going to knit in the round anymore. I'm going to knit in rows and I'm going to work on this half the first half of the round that has my stitch marker in there. So the first thing I'm going to do is knit across until two stitches remain once again, giving it a little tug when I go from one half of the round to the other because I don't want any laddering up the side, slip the marker when you come to it. So I have two stitches remaining on this needle tip. And again, remember we're only working on half of the rim. We're working in rows now. So to create a wrap and turn, you wanna take the working yarn and have it wrap around to the next stitch to do that. You're going to bring the yarn in the opposite direction of where it was. So it was in the back of my work. I want it in the front of my work. Now, I'm going to slip the stitch from the left hand needle to the right hand needle. I'm going to take that yarn back to the back where it was. And now that stitch is wrapped, I hope you can see right there and I'm going to pop that same stitch back on the left hand needle before I turn the work. So that stitch is wrapped, that's the wrapped stitch. So this one on the end is not wrapped. This one is wrapped so the stitch is sticking up and it has a little scarf on. It has a little wrapped scarf on for this row. I'm going to pearl across until two stitches remain. So I'm not pearling that wrapped stitch. I've already put it on the needle where I want it to be. So I'm going to pearl across until two stitches remain. So here we have the stitch that we wanna wrap our yarn is not where we want it to be. It's here on this side. So we want it on this side. We're gonna take it between the needles, not over the needle that's gonna add a stitch and you don't want that. You're going to take the yarn to the back, slip that stitch from the left needle to the right needle, bring the yarn back to the side where it was and pop it back on the left hand needle and now I am ready to turn my work. So I've done two wrap and turn rows moving on and you can do this as many times as you need to. Depending on how many stitches you have on your needle. You're going to knit to the stitch before the wrapped stitch. However many stitches that is based on how you have created your sock, it's pretty easy to see. You can always use extra stitch markers as you need to. So here was my un rips. Here is my unwrapped stitch on the end. There is my wrapped stitch. This is the stitch before the wrapped stitch. So I'm going to wrap it. I'm gonna bring the yarn to the front because it was in the back, slip it and I will slip these pearl wise, I'm gonna bring my yarn to the back, slip it back onto the left hand needle, turn my work and now I'm going to pearl across until one stitch before my wrapped stitch. So here is the stitch four, the wrapped stitch. I'm gonna take the iron to the back. Remember between the needles not over, slip the stitch to the right hand side bring that yarn back, pop it back on to the left hand side. And now I'm ready to turn my work. Once again. If I was knitting in a lighter weight of yarn, I would have more stitches. Or if I was knitting for a bigger foot, I would have more stitches. Uh But on this particular pattern, I've already accomplished what I needed to do. I have taken, uh, my stitches down until I have eight unwrapped stitches, which is what my pattern says. Four on either side of the marker. So now we're going to have to go back, we've done the first part of the short rows. Now, we have to incorporate all these stitches back into the work. So I'm going to knit to the wrapped stitch. So I'm knitting probably eight because we had four empty ones on either side of the marker. So that was four, 56, seven, eight. Now, it says knit the next stitch along with its wrap. So what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to grab that wrap and put it up onto my left hand needle. So this guy is the stitch that was already existing, living its life and this is the wrap. I'm going to knit them together. Now, this is not a knit two together in the traditional sense. It's not a decrease. I'm just incorporating the wrap with the stitch that it was wrapped around. Now, it tells me to wrap and turn. So I'm going to put a second wrap on this stitch. I'm gonna bring the yarn forward, slip it over, bring the yarn back, put it back on the left hand needle. So you can see if you look closely, you can see that this stitch nail has two wraps on it. Turn my work, I'm gonna do basically the same thing on the other side. I'm going to pearl until I get to the wrapped stitch. Pass that stitch marker over when you come to it. So here is my wrapped stitch. I'm going to grab the stitch and also the wrap. I'm going to pearl into it. So I find I kind of need to use both needles to get that wrap up. If you have a way that's more convenient for you, the way that you hold your knitting needles, that's ok. But you want to make sure that you're pearling the stitch and the wrap. Now I'm gonna wrap and turn my next stitch. Bring my yarn back past the stitch, bring my yarn to the front and turn. Now you're gonna keep going until you've incorporated all those wrapped stitches back into your row in my case because I have so few stitches on my sock. I'm already done. So I'm going to go ahead and start knitting in the round again for the leg. So I'm going to keep knitting, pass the marker and when I come to any wrapped stitches. I'm going to deal with them the way I did before by knitting the stitch and their wraps. But you'll notice the ones that we incorporated, incorporated into this reverse shaping, they now have two wraps on them, not one. So I wanna make sure I get both of those wraps up on the needle. And I'm going to go ahead and knit those stitches along with their wraps. And now I'm getting ready to go to the legs. So I'm going back to my magic loop. I'm going to knit all the way around. So I'm taking the section that I did in rows and I'm joining it all up again to work in the round once again giving that a good tug. So I don't have a gap or any kind of laddering along the side. When I get over here to the front needle again, I'm going to have one stitch with wraps that was left over from our last pearl row. So I'm gonna pop this needle out this one, grab these wraps and bring them up, knit this guy along with its wraps. And now all my wraps are incorporated. So by having that one stitch on the end of either side, that didn't have any wraps that make sure that I don't have any weird gaps on the side when I'm going to go back to knitting the round, which is what we're doing um past that marker and I'm going to knit around and around and around right now until I get my leg completed. Now, you have a couple of options as far as leg height goes, you can go right to, I would do a couple more rounds, but you could go right to the cuff if you wanted to make a little, no show sock, a little ankle sock, or you could keep knitting until the leg is as tall as you like to have it when you're wearing your socks. Another good rule of thumb, if you're unsure how long your recipient might like like their socks to be is to use your sock ruler again, making sure you take the side with arrow and put it down, put that down till it touches the heel and measure up so that the leg is the same length as the foot. That's a very customary measurement. And if you're guessing that would be a very good educated guess at that point, all you have to do is put a cuff on. Usually it's ribbed in some way to help that sock, stay up and bind off and your sock is all completed from the toe to the cuff with its Turkish cast on and its short row, wrap and turn heel. This is one of many variations that you can make for a toe up sock on the magic loop. Once again, I am Mary Beth Temple. Thank you so much for joining me here today and I hope this helped you make your first sock toe up using magic loop and then you can take the techniques you learned here and go forth and complete some of the myriad sock patterns that are out there that are knit in this fashion. Take care. Bye bye.