Almost 1/2 way there

[cacunn]

Deleted by CACUNN

[Pleater]

I tend to stick to the straight needles as I can all too easily forget to do shaping, or manage to get the toe and heel out of alignment.

I can only use the two circulars for my hose - I never get enough stitches to stretch around a single circular.

How are you making the purl increase?

I know the knit and purl into one stitch,
the pick up the bar between stitches twist and purl,
but I think that the neatest method is to pick up the 'heel' of the stitch of the previous row and purl into it. The heel is the top of the stitch. This seems to cause the least disruption to the stitches.

[cacunn]

Deleted by CACUNN

[Pleater]

When doing socks and increasing up the 'spine' at the back of the leg I make the increases on the side of the spine, so would take the heel of the next stitch on the right of the spine and the heel of the last knitted st on the left side of the spine.

The only exception would be if doing it that way would cause it to show up more.

Sometimes it can be neater if you do a few unpatterned stitches each side of the spine, and at the increases take the outermost stitches of the plain strip into the pattern and increase within the strip.

You can do either a couple of purl st each side of a k st or the opposite, or do K P K or P K P up the spine rather than a single st, which you do not change but make the increases just outside it, keeping the same number of st in the strip but feed them into the pattern as you increase.

I find that easier to keep neat, and also to maintain the pattern correctly rather than try to make a less noticable spine and increases.

[ThreadBbdr]

The "fiddleyness" of matching increases is one of the reasons that I like to do my socks and hose from the top down. K2Together and SSK decreases match much better than any paired increases that I've been able to figure out.

For different options, look for directions about decreases (or increases) along a raglan sleeve line on sweaters knit in the round. That seam has the same basic issues as the calf shaping on hose (ie a varying change in stitch count over a visually obvious distance). Jacqueline Fee's The Sweater Workshop has a set of pictures of various options for paired decreases. It's back in print and usually available from libraries. (Also recommended if you are interested in sweater knitting in general - teaches you how to measure and design without a 'pattern'.)

[cacunn]

Deleted by CACUNN

[Darkislander]

Oh how lovely.