One of the things I love most about handknit socks is the way they are so customizable. Feet come in infinite shapes and sizes, after all. With a little know-how, you can do a lot to make socks fit your own unique feet.
There are a lot of sock toe variations out there. Today, we'll cover the wedge toe, the round toe, and the star toe for cuff down sock knitting. These are my three favorite shapes that I return to on a regular basis.
The Wedge Toe: The Most Common
This is a popular toe shape for people with shorter toes or toes that are relatively straight across. If your toes are a little longer, you can make it deeper by adding a few rounds of plain knit stitches before you start the decreases. The wedge toe is also a great toe shape for beginner sock knitters. It’s relatively uncomplicated—just a knit round, followed by a decrease round, repeated until it’s time to seam the toe.
This is a popular toe shape for people with longer toes overall or whose middle toes might be longer than their big toe. That’s because it has a shape that more naturally echoes that profile. On the other hand, this toe is the most complex of the toes in this post. It involves keeping track of both stitch counts and round counts. If you’re the kind of knitter who prefers a toe where you don’t have to keep track of quite so many components, you might prefer the wedge toe or the star toe.
The star toe is an elegant variant on the wedge toe. Instead of working the decreases symmetrically across the top and bottom of the sock, the decreases are worked in radiating spokes toward the center point. The star toe is popular among knitters who don’t like the Kitchener stitch or who have middle toes that are longer than their big toe. It is a shallower toe akin to the wedge toe, though.