I am nearly finished with a pair of Lifestyle toe up s o c k stoeupsocksnoswatchneeded . They sold me on no swatch . I might experiment for a different method of doing the heel but if you ' re not too worried about picking up stitches it ' s a very simple method . I also prefer the Judy Becker cast on exclusively for socks , seems complicated but it ' s very easy to try it a few times especially since you only start with 610 stitches on a toe depending on the size of your yarn and the feet you ' re knitting for . I want to mention you may want to be wary of knitting socks for gifts . Example my husband has big , weirdly shaped feet . So to make socks that fit him I ended up adding a gusset to that sock pattern . Downside I had to keep trying the first sock on him . Upside Now I ' ve made one pair of socks , I wrote down my recipe and can fiddle with it to keep making him socks . Other downside hes so used to wearing toosmall mass produced socks that socks that fit him feel loose . Just can ' t win ! !