Partisan sentiments

[cimorene]

Having sampled both top-down and toe-up socks, I'm now of the opinion that there is little good reason to knit them top-down.

It's the older way, so there are plenty of patterns and people who simply learned one way and never went further, which is a quite legitimate reason. And it's technically possible for a complicated pattern to have some concern that makes the math easier that direction. But generally, once you get as far as comparing them, the toe-up method just creates an infinitely superior toe with Judy's Magic Cast-On and lets you just keep knitting the top until you're going to run out of yarn if you want to.

Patterns written for toe-up socks are vanishingly rare, though! This isn't a huge hardship - adapting the design bits if you have the right gauge, and knitting the toe and heel in your preferred method, is totally doable. But it's a disturbing sign of the failure of this superior technology to take hold!

Comments

[james]

I agree with everything you say! Toe-up solidarity! *fist bump* Er, well, *toe-bump*

100%

[ironymaiden]

My preference for toe-up socks is what helped to make me a more independent knitter. I rarely use a pattern for socks now unless I'm learning a new technique. Toe-up, Fleegle heel, and something from one of my stitch dictionaries. (Socks are a great canvas for trying out stuff from stitch dictionaries.)

Re: 100%

[cimorene]

Yeah, I started to do that recently but one of my needles broke, so I've got to replace it before I can knit the second sock.

[twistedchick]

I still prefer top-down, because when I tried the toe-up method you mention I couldn't get it to close as tightly at the toe as I like, and ended up having to re-sew it afterward. And I'm not that good at doing the heel from that direction, whereas top-down I can do the whole thing, including turning the heel, in a few hours (but I've been doing them that way for 20 years.)

[cimorene]

I can see that tightening up the stitches around the toe could help the sock maintain structural integrity over time, the way toe reinforcement does. I do like to weave my cast-on end in at the end of the toe and use it to reinforce the corners and that seems to fix it as far as I'm concerned, but there are various ways you could tighten the gauge there as you go as well.