Evil Sock Genius Lessons

Weapons

The Evil Genius Sock is made with the "Magic Loop" method. When knitting, the back half of your sock hangs in the middle of your needle cable. There will be two big loops of cable on either side, and you work across the front of your sock with the ends of the circular needle. You can find illustrated instructions on the web by typing "magic loop" into your favorite search engine, or see if your local yarn store carries the official Magic Loop booklet by Fiber Trends.

Evil Geniuses hate wasting time. Just start knitting.

The toe of your sock is your gauge swatch. Grab a circular needle in the size indicated on the yarn band (or one size smaller), then use Turkish Cast-On.

Knitting the Toe

Turkish Cast-On

Rounded Toe

Toe Increases

By the time you reach the desired circumference, you are far enough that you can check your gauge and whether you like the resulting fabric. Not much time is invested, so it's easy to start over, but if it's good, then you didn't waste that time doing a gauge swatch.

Be careful not to increase too many times. If the sock toe fits over all five toes, then it's too big. If it fits over all except the "pinkie" toe, then it's probably the right size.

Evil Geniuses can knit both socks at once, but they don't always want to.

Before going on to knit the foot, decide whether you want to knit one sock at a time, or both at once. It's not that tricky to do both at once. The tubes sit side by side on your loop. You knit across the front stitches of one tube, drop the yarn, then knit across the front stitches of the other.

Yarmando finds that he works faster knitting one sock at a time, but when he wants to avoid tedious row counting to make the second sock match the first, he'll do both at once. He makes one toe, sets it aside, makes the second toe, and then puts both socks on the loop. When he reaches the heel, he sets one sock aside; it's too much trouble doing both heels at once.

Knitting the Foot

Now you just keep knitting around until you've reached the desired length before your gusset increases. If you wish, you can work ribbing or some other pattern across the instep. Meanwhile, it's time to begin plotting your domination of the heel.

Using Rounds-Per-Inch

Count how many rows (or rounds) work out to an inch. Multiply that by the length of the foot this sock is meant to fit. Got it?

Now find your sock's stitch circumference on the chart. Subtract the number of designated gusset/heel rounds from your total number of rounds. You now know how many rounds to knit before starting the gussets.


Sock
circum-
ference		 Gusset/
heel
rounds
28 17
32 19
36 22
40 24
44 27
48 29
52 32
56 34
60 37
64 39
68 42
72 44
76 47
80 49

Rounds per inch =
 		  

Length of foot =

  

Multiply together for
total sock length

  

Gusset/heel rounds =

  

Subtract to find length
of sock before gussets

  

Gusset Increases

If you haven't yet decided, decide now which side of your sock is the top (instep) and which is the bottom (sole).

Original circumference 28 32 36 40 44 48 52
Gusset increase repeats 5 5 6 6 7 7 8
Stitches after gussets 38 42 48 52 58 62 68

Original circumference 56 60 64 68 72 76 80
Gusset increase repeats 8 9 9 10 10 11 11
Stitches after gussets 72 78 82 88 92 98 102


Evil Geniuses are not constrained by rules.

The great Cat Bordhi discovered that gusset increases in this section can be placed anywhere on the sock and it will still fit. All you have to do is increase at the rate of 2 stitches every three rounds. The instructions here produce a conventional, normal-looking sock, but as your genius develops, follow Bordhi's lead and explore the possibilities before you.

Turning the Heel

(See also Detailed Instructions for this section)

Identify the center of your sole. This will also be the center of your heel stitches. Place markers to identify the heel (see chart below -- if your heel base is 14 stitches, then you will place markers 7 stitches to either side of the center of your sole).
Repeat the last two rows the designated number of times, until the stitches between your heel markers equals the designated number of heel flap stitches on the chart.

Original circumference 28 32 36 40 44 48 52
Heel base stitches
 10 10
 12 12
 14 14 16
Short row turns
 2 4 4 6 6 8 8
Heel flap stitches
 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

Original circumference 56 60 64 68 72 76 80
Heel base stitches
 16 18 18 20 20 22 22
Short row turns
 10 10 12 12 14 14 16
Heel flap stitches
 26 28 30 32 34 36 38

Finishing the Heel Base and Knitting the Heel Flap

Your last turn should bring the knit side facing. Knit a complete round, working the wraps together with the stitches that they wrapped. You can discard the turning markers, but keep the heel markers.

Continue knitting around, up to but not including the last stitch heel stitch. Get the marker out of your way and join the last heel stitch with the first gusset stitch with SSK (or Slip 1, K1, PSSO). Turn.
Repeat these rows, knitting the heel flap upwards while consuming your gusset stitches. Finish when your SSK leaves only one stitch remaining before the instep stitches (two stitches remain on the other side of the heel flap).

Cuff

Work the leg of your sock in whatever pattern strikes your fancy. A simple ribbing is always a good choice. The length is completely up to you.

Stretchy Bind-Off

Nothing ruins your work on a pair of socks like binding off too tightly. There are a few techniques you can use to make sure socks aren't too tight at the top: bind off with a larger needle, add yarn-over stitches to your binding, Elizabeth Zimmerman's sewn bind-off, etc.

This one is easy, fast, and elastic. Work two stitches in pattern, then slide them both back over to the left needle and knit them together through the back loops. Work the next stitch, slide the two active stitches back to the left hand needle and knit them together through the back loop. Continue until finished.

Evil Geniuses gloat.

Break yarn, weave in the ends, and laugh your Evil Genius laugh as you ponder the masterpiece of your perfect sock creation.



Evil Geniuses credit their muses.

Yarmando licenses "Evil Sock Genius Lessons" under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.  Feel free to use for non-commercial purposes, and if you adapt it, please give credit.  Yarmando would like to give credit to the others who inspired this pattern.