Short-Row Sock Heel Experiment

One of the things I noticed while trying out all those different short row heels is that the first half of most SRH techniques, where you are short-rowing “down”, looks a lot better than the second half, where you are short-rowing “up”.

So, I thought — why not just do the first half twice?  I mean, basically you are knitting two wedges, like so —  

and even if you turn one of them upside down, it will add up to the same shape in the end.

You can’t get away with doing this on a SR toe, of course.  A toe has to fold in half at the narrow part.  But a heel — now, that’s different…

It works!  and it’s pretty cool, too.  Here is a closeup, with an attempt at drawing in the afore-mentioned wedges…

…and here is a closeup without any drawing.  This pair was done using the first half only of the double st SR heel technique — but doing it twice.  If you look at the pic above of the full pair, you may be able to pick out the heel “wedges” on the topmost sock, due to the self-striping yarn.  On this sock, with a mostly solid-red heel, you almost cannot see the heel turn at all.  And in a non-self-striping yarn, I think it would be pretty much invisible.  Very slick!