Simple Sock Pattern

The ankle

1. Measure your ankle at the widest part you want the sock to reach (this will likely be around your heel)
2. Measure how many stitches are in an inch on your swatch.
3. Cast on the (number of stitches per inch) x (inches around the widest part of your foot)
   • Adjust the number of stitches to be a multiple of 4. (if you divide it by 2 it should still be even)
   • You can use whatever cast-on you like, but I would suggest the longtail caston it's a little more complicated, but much easier to not twist your stitches.
   • Cast on in a k2, p2 pattern.
4. *knit 2, purl 2* until your sock is as tall as you'd like it to be.
   How to figure out how tall your heel is going to be, in case you want to subtract that from the desired total height. (just in case you're feeling picky about sock height)

   Take one quarter of the total cast on stitches. (or divide it by 2, then by 2 again--I'm not sure if this is always the same as dividing it by four) This number is the same as the number of rows tall your heel will be. You can take this number and multiply it by your swatch to figure out the height in inches.

The heel

Short rows are knit flat, and in my opinion are the simplest way to knit a heel. However, I hear a lot of knitters grumble about short rows or tutorials sold as "you don't even have to do short rows!" so YMMV. I'll detail how to do short rows below:

1. Halve your total stitches--you can put the other half on a stitch holder or just mark them off with stitch markers, but you'll be ignoring them the whole time you knit the heel.
2. Knit across up to the last stitch of your heel, and instead of knitting that last stitch wrap the yarn around the base of it (pull yarn to the front of the work, slst, pull the yarn to the back of the work, sl st), and turn your work.
3. Purl across the heel to the last stitch and wrap that one as well. You'll now have two stitches, one on each side of the row, that are inactive and that you won't be knitting (stitch markers are your friends here).
4. Continue in this way, wrapping and "deactivating" the last stitch of every row until you have half the stitches left. (eg- if you cast on 32 stitches for the whole sock, your heel will be 16 stitches wide, and you'll wrap stitches until you have 8 left unwrapped (and four wrapped stitches on either side))
5. Now we're reactivating all the stitches we just went to the effort of deactivating--so when you then knit across the next row, when you reach your first wrapped stitch, slip the wrap off your stitch (keeping it on the left needle) and knit both the stitch and the wrap together.

Midfoot

Just keep knitting 👍

The toes will be the same length as the heel, so just keep knitting until you only have that much left.

Toes

1. Go ahead and do the short rows again, exactly like you did the heel: divide your total number of stitches in half, wrap one stitch at a time until you have half of them left, then unwrap one at a time.
2. Separate your stitches evenly onto two needles and cut/tear the yarn giving yourself a tail the length of your arm. To close the hole we'll be using the Kitchener stitch.
3. Hold both needles together with your nondominant hand. With a yarn needle thread the tail through the right-most stitch on the needle closest to you as though you were purling. Leave the stitch on the needle
4. Thread the tail, as if to knit, through the right-most stitch on the back needle. Leave the stitch on the needle. Repeat the bulletpoint steps until you have two stitches left:
   • Front needle (closest to you): thread the tail as if to knit and slip the stitch off the knitting needle.
   • Front needle: thread the tail as if to purl and leave the stitch on.
   • Back needle: thread the tail as if to purl and slip the stitch off the needle.
   • Back needle: thread the tail as if to knit and leave the stitch on.
5. Thread the tail through the last stitch on the needle closest to you as if to knit and slip the stitch off.
6. Thread the tail through the last stitch on the needle farthest from you as if to purl and slip that stitch off too.
7. Weave in any ends you have.

Celebrate!

🎊🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🎊