I learned to knit socks in a drugged state. I’d had emergency surgery for appendicitis and, finding myself marooned on the couch, needed something other than the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” to occupy my attention. Although I’d been a knitter for thirty years, I’d never mastered anything beyond dishcloths and misshapen sweaters. As I contemplated the ugly hospital-issue socks adorning my toes, it struck me: I should teach myself to knit socks. Just two days previously, I’d been churning out festive red dishcloths — festooned with knitted holly leaves — during the family’s traditional Christmas viewing of The Lion in Winter when my brother-in-law-to-be, Thomas (slightly bored, during the lengthy bit in the middle where Katherine Hepburn’s Eleanor of Aquitaine enters her reflective, maudlin stage), asked if I “could knit anything else.” Challenge, good sir, accepted.
The earliest hand-knit socks on record date back to the third century—a pair of grubby red socks hailing from Egypt. They have a bifurcated toe to allow for the wearing of an early flip-flop-type shoe and are housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where they take pride of place in the Knitting Collection. These early Egyptian sockettes must have required extensive planning on the knitter’s part, for even the most straightforward of socks is a complex creature. One must consider the length of the foot, the angle of the toe shaping, the height of the arch, the girth of the ankle, the width of the heel, the wearer’s preference for sock height—ankle or calf length, mid- or high-calf, worn pulled up straight or slouched loosely, and with what kind of outer footwear (boots, shoes, sneakers)? Will the upper part of the sock be visible or concealed?
The preparation stage alone would seem to require college-level calculus. In my narcotically enhanced condition, I knew that such numerical gymnastics were well beyond my grasp. I decided to wing it, even though such recklessness is generally frowned upon by The Knitting Guild Association. I would just cast on and knit.
Once one gets through the lengthy groundwork, hand-knitting socks is a mostly uncomplicated process. “Knitting in the round,” the process by which most hand-knit socks are created, involves the creation of a tube of knitting with no apparent end or beginning. It looks impressive; a magical, seamless construction flowing with sprezzaturra, sometimes from as many as four moving needles. There are no interruptions or pauses when knitting in this way; it’s the knitting equivalent of an 80-person round of “Frere Jacques.” From my sick bed, this seemed like a good idea.
Despite my determination to eschew mathematical preliminaries, I still had one important choice to make: Which needles to use? Unlike “traditional” knitting, which requires the familiar two pointed sticks, knitting in the round requires either four smaller double-pointed needles or one extremely long circular needle. I considered four double-pointed needles for half a minute, but knew there was no way I’d be able to juggle four needles and a ball of yarn in my compromised state. Out came the circular needle—a 40” length of flexible cable connecting two shafts of polished bamboo with sharp ends. With the help of YouTube, I twisted the cable upon itself, turning and twiddling seemingly at random until the cable morphed and took on the vague appearance of odd, misshapen rabbit ears. With the stitches in place, and the cable looking as close to rabbit ears as a hot pink plastic cable possibly can, the knitting could finally commence.
I’d planned a fairly basic pair of socks for Thomas; these days I might even go so far as to call them “vanilla.” A band of knit-one, purl-one rib to create the cuff, followed by endless rows of plain stocking stitch: knit stitch after knit stitch after knit stitch until—if we ignore the enigma that is the heel—I arrived at a length that would encase both the foot and a decent portion of the ankle and lower calf. But I hadn’t accounted for the size of the intended foot. Thomas has smaller feet than most men, but nonetheless, a sock designed to custom-fit his foot was a good two inches longer, maybe more, than one designed for a more diminutive appendage.
Given that the yarn traditionally used for sock knitting is of a fine, slender heft, the average sock takes a lot of stitches. Consider, now, these salient facts: the average adult sock requires a cast-on of between 70 and 80 stitches. In order to construct the leg, those 80 stitches are knit over again for sometimes as many as 200 rows. After we’ve ignored the heel—for we’ve already established that the heel is a law unto itself—we move on to the foot: probably another 100 or so rows at least, let’s say 120 to be on the safe side, and then the final toe shaping. The transformation of one 200-yard ball of sock yarn into one man-sized vanilla sock requires somewhere in the region of 25,000 stitches.
And, of course, there’s never just one sock.
I knit pretty quickly, but my stitches-per-minute never exceeds 50spm, which in this instance translates to an Estimated Knitting Time of 500 minutes—just over eight hours—per sock, if I knit nonstop. Eight hours without pausing, halting to gulp down another Vicodin, sip from a mug of tea, nibble from a slice of toast, rearrange the pillows, or hobble, pillow clutched to tender navel, to the bathroom. Eight hours without succumbing to the viewing temptations of Ina Garten’s culinary delights; eight hours without laying down the needles to uncramp my bent fingers. Eight whole hours. Despite the fact that, once one gets going, simple sock-knitting is mostly mindless work, it is nonetheless equivalent to taking that road trip out west: there is always—always—a compelling reason to stop.
In “Where it Begins: Knitting as Creation Story,” Barbara Kingsolver has a more romantic notion of what it means to knit. Kingsolver’s knitting is of great importance; it is evolution; it is, as her title suggests, creation; it is ultimately inexorable. I doubt that Kingsolver halts for toast breaks once she starts. She tells us that “there’s no stopping”; once that act of creation is underway, it is relentless, her needles “a sturdy raised bed from which she cultivates the lively apical stem of sock-sleeve-stocking-cap,” an organic process that bears little if any resemblance to my clumsy tangle of rabbit-eared cables and messy yarn. My needles are not a sturdy raised bed; they will not give rise to something miraculous or even vaguely wondrous. I doubt that Barbara and I would knit well together. While she created custom-made gloves for “the firecracker nephew with one digit missing in action,” and promised to envelop her best-beloveds in “the bliss of a perfect fit,” I was distracted by a particularly tempting potato dish that Guy Fieri informed me was “off the hook” while wrestling with too many strands of too many things and letting loose gentle obscenities.
Every knitter has a List of Knitworthiness, and Kingsolver’s seems to be populated with friends and relations more than worthy of a bespoke knitted garment. On that front we agree, although I wonder what private merits would gain one inclusion on her list. During the early stages of my knitting career, inclusion on the List of Knitworthiness was fairly straightforward: If you’d shown any degree of interest in my knitting, I’d happily adorn you with a cute scarf or a jaunty hat, possibly even with a pom-pom. Thomas had indeed demonstrated an appropriate degree of interest and had made an impressive leap up the List of Knitworthiness. He had jumped past the blanket I’d promised to my sister-in-law for her new baby, overtaken the purple-and-black-striped hat my brother had requested, and run rampant past the cable-knit scarf I’d been planning to knit for Susan ever since we’d become serious enough to know that our relationship could withstand the Curse of the Love Sweater.
(Let me take a second here to explain: the Curse of the Love Sweater refers to the certain knowledge that if a knitter embarks on a large project, like a sweater, for a significant other, the relationship is doomed to fail before the final stitch is cast-off. Should the relationship survive the knitting phase, the preordained refusal of the recipient to wear the finished garment will hammer the final, inevitable nails into the coffin of the condemned relationship. After a 4:00am conversation during which I had woken Susan from a dead sleep and offered to knit her a replica of a worn-out high-school sweater, we decided that a scarf would be a much safer alternative. But her scarf was now pushed to the bottom of a knitting bag; Thomas’s brief moment of interest had taken precedence.)
My List of Knitworthiness is a transient, unstable being. Engage in anything that warrants a thank-you beyond a 12-for-three-dollars note card, and you’re on the list. But even though I have a yarn stash equal to the task (my stash long since acquired SABLE status: Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy), few of these planned demonstrations of affection come to fruition. I have grander knitting ambitions than I can ever hope to achieve.
But it is equally easy to be removed from the List of Knitworthiness. Some individuals will remain consistently knitworthy, regardless of their actions; others will occupy the list for a short time, never knowing they were once in line for a pair of lace-knit fingerless gloves inspired by the Twilight movies. My sister-in-law, Steph, has a fairly safe spot on the List; she always sends photographs of my niece and nephew wearing my knitted creations and never tires of telling me I could make a killing if I could turn out enough cute fox cardigans—complete with ears and tail—to meet her toddler-group friends’ demands. My parents occupy the list permanently, although they have recently asked to be taken off it. Over the years, I have given them both innumerable pairs of hand-knit socks: Mum has lacy socks with leaves in her favorite shade of green, socks with fox faces in a vibrant copper yarn, at least two pairs of legwarmers, and several pairs of practical socks to wear with her Wellingtons when it rains; Dad owns dress socks in tan, bottle-green knee-length socks with turn-down cuffs to wear with an elastic garter when he’s dressed in his traditional gamekeeping breeches, and thick boot socks by the half-dozen.
“There are only so many socks we can wear,” Mum told me over a Skype conversation last summer, “and it doesn’t help that I have to hand-wash them.”
Most recently, during an inconvenient run-in with breast cancer, Susan’s Cowboy-Boot-Wearing-Surgeon made it onto the list, and I sweetened our interactions with her Highly-Personable-Head-Oncologist with a pair of striped socks in his navy and red med school colors. Since the other chap, the Handsome Oncologist, insisted on committing the fashion faux pas of black socks with brown shoes, the blue-and-white-striped University of Kentucky-themed socks I made for him stand a strong chance of becoming a staple of his work wardrobe. I’m sure that none of these recipients will ever have been gifted a pair of hand-knit socks before, but I have confidence that once they slip those custom-made merino confections onto their tired feet, they’ll be skipping on cushions of air.
After weekly pedicures, hand-knit socks are the kindest thing you can do for your feet. I’m not the only person to think so: Pablo Neruda waxed about the magnificence Mara Mori’s socks, knit with her “sheepherder’s hands.” Those socks were “as soft as rabbits…knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,” worship-worthy socks which rendered his feet somehow less than they had ever been before, yet simultaneously elevated them to a preeminent attractiveness.
After experiencing my hand-knit socks, I was sure that Thomas would reject all other footwear as unfit for his feet and beg me to knit more; that thought drove me on as I juggled with needles and yarn, progressing past the cuff, past the leg, and down to the enigma that is the heel. Knitting a sock heel requires faith on the part of the knitter. This is where the proverbial wheat is sorted from the chaff, when the serious knitters show themselves to be serious and those destined only to knit scarves and piles of dishcloths are committed to their rectangular fate. The heel is where the sock bends, changes direction; where it ceases to be a simple tube of knitted fabric and becomes a useful garment. The gusset must be of the right depth or the sock will dangle from the body of the foot, and no amount of tugging and pulling will allow the wearer to ease the sock past the heel and onto the calf. The heel is where the success—or failure—of a sock rests, at once mysterious and intimidating. Many a knitter has advanced toward the heel, wits intact, only to find the perplexing combination of knit stitches, slip stitches, wraps, and turns too much for the nerves.
Perhaps it was the Vicodin, but I faced my virginal heel experience with a casual bravado. By this time, I had manipulated needles and yarn into a passable sock leg, and felt unstoppable. I squinted at the coded cyphers. “WS facing,” they read, followed by “sl1, p16, p2tog, p1, turn.” I took a deep breath and complied. There were stitches left on my needle, which didn’t seem right, but I trusted the process and moved on. “sl1, k3, ssk, k1, turn”, and then “sl1, p4, 2tog, p1, turn.” Unconvinced, I halted, sipped tea, and scrutinized the print: I was to continue in this mysterious vein for several more rows, before attempting an elusive maneuver called “picking up the heel flap.” There was nothing to lose; if I’d made a mistake it was already too late. I continued until the instructions for picking up the heel flap were the only thing in my way. I advanced obediently, “using the ndl holding the heel sts (now referred to as ndl 1)” to “pu 16 sts along the heel flap, pu 1 extra st between the heel flap and the instep (to close the gap), pm,” and, finally, “k across half of the instep sts (16 sts).” My Stitches Per Minute took a massive hit and plummeted to an all-time-low of three.
The expected disaster failed to materialize, and slowly a familiar shape started to appear. Could it be the gentle curve of a sock heel? Encouraged, I galloped along without pause, not daring to stop until the last stitch was picked up, the heel flaps were connected to the gusset, the gaps between flap, gusset and upper were safely closed, and I could finally let out the breath I’d been holding, feeling the achievement shiver its way through tensed shoulders and wrists. My inaugural sock neared completion.
Thomas’s first sock had taken almost a week to complete, and I was about to commence the second sock. Aided by familiarity, pride, and continued confinement to the couch, I dodged the dangers of Second Sock Syndrome, and the first sock’s twin fairly rattled off my needles. It was hard for me to say goodbye to those socks; watching Thomas slip what were now his socks into a plastic supermarket bag was almost too much to bear. But I allowed those socks to take flight—I was sure they would be much loved—consoled myself with thoughts of socks to come, and committed Thomas’ socks to memory.
I asked Thomas about his hand-knit socks once, about six months after I had presented them to him. “What did you think of your socks, Thomas? Did they fit okay?”
“Oh, I must have lost them,” he said. “I tossed them in the back of the car and never saw them again.”
He’d recently disposed of the car into which he thought my socks had been tossed. It was old, beaten-up, and had become akin to a black hole. Opening the driver’s door was like stepping over the event horizon; an entropic soup of fast-food bags, empty soda cans, and candy wrappers lurked in the space where the back seat should have been. Somewhere in there, he thought, were the socks I’d made for him.He hadn’t even tried to retrieve the socks before handing his battered car over to Charlie, his next-door neighbor.
Charlie took the Corolla off his hands without raising an eyebrow at what was going on in the back seat; he planned to strip the car down for parts, and didn’t care about a little leftover rubbish. But I find myself wondering, now, if Charlie ever saw fit to clean out the back of that car. Perhaps he stumbled across a pale brown Kroger bag and pulled it out, intrigued by the slight bulge of softness. Perhaps, upon digging through that bag, he discovered a pair of blue and green socks, all the colours of a Floridian sea, knitted into a gift for someone’s tired feet.
Maybe Charlie washed those socks and slipped them onto his feet, just to see if they’d fit, and maybe he wears them still. I wouldn’t know Charlie if I fell over him. But I’d know those socks anywhere.
I am not a knitter, but I am scowling HEARTILY in the direction of Thomas right now. Respect the handmade socks, Thomas! Geez.
I’m pretty sure that lighting him on fire is a reasonable life choice.
I AM a knitter, and I’ve developed a deep-seated, hearty hate for Thomas. How dare he!
I’m a knitter too, and I am incensed. He is OFF THE LIST!!
I join you in your hate. Socks! He didn’t appreciate socks! He should be shunned by all knitters for all time.
I knew from the second he put them in a Kroger bag that he was bad news.
He’s fallen onto the “never will” list of every knitter who reads this.
He’s been black-needled/yarn-balled/cast-off or whatever other term I can cobble together from knitting terminology and shunning idioms.
Cast off! Yes. Perfect. (Retitles the Never Ever Knitting For Again list)
So many people on this list. Mostly family who say, “Oh . . . thanks . . . I guess . . . ” and then never use the item ever at all.
I don’t so much get offended if they don’t like what I’ve knit for them, but I do request that if they ever want to give it to goodwill or put it in a yard sale they first give me the option of wanting it back. Also, asking ‘what would you like’ and getting a definitive answer is helpful (this has been great the past couple christmases), as is encouraging them to buy yarn and tell me what they would like it to turn into.
This is why I currently do the majority of my knitting for babies and children, whose parents will simply MAKE them wear what I knit. My current fave, though, is my oldest nephew (age four), who, when I told him I would make him a scarf for Christmas, gasped aloud and said “A RED scarf?!?!?” He was so thrilled (and frankly a little bossy–everytime I called, he asked “Is my scarf ready, auntie?”) He got a red-and-gold Gryffindor scarf, complete with tassels, and I got a very gratifying photo from my sister of him wearing his new scarf on Christmas Day while playing with his cousins and baby brother (who got a little buttoned cowl in the leftover gold).
I was admiring some knitted hats with attached knitted gnome-beards online once, and lamenting that I didn’t have the requisite $50 or so to spend on a hat, and my boyfriend said, “Oh, those are too expensive. My coworker knits. We should have her make you one.” Now, I had never met this coworker, and I said, a little horrified, “What? I would never ask her to spend so much time on something for someone she’s never met,” and he was like, “It’s no problem, she likes knitting.” Way to devalue women’s labor there, dude.
O_o.
My response to ppl cavalierly asking me to knit them whatever (the most egregious example being a bleeding double-sized bed crocheted bedspread) is to tell them that I will _happily_ teach them to knit and/or crochet and then they can make their own!
I have yet to have a single human take me up on it, but if boyfriend wants to do something SUPER nice for you, I am pretty sure I could teach these skills over Skype 😉 (this will have the added value of teaching him that yarn is Not Free).
I used to be polite when coworkers (or other randos – I once had a lady on the bus try to convince me to make her a hat?) would ask me for hand-knits – I’d never agree to do it, but I would try to let them down gently, with lots of excuses – but now I just laugh and say “Nope!” I love knitting, and I do it as often as I can, but my time is limited and precious. (Also good supplies aren’t cheap!)
I also no longer offer to teach people, because I’ve learned the hard way that I have no patience for it.
The only time I’ve ever made something that someone asked me to make it was because she asked “how much would you charge for time and material to make this?” That is how you ask for handmade stuff.
Yep! And then be ready to come through with the cash if they agree! Or barter your own labor if you’re allergic to paying your friends for whatever reason.
I do baby hats for coworkers that I like, but that is mostly because I am a crocheter and I could probably knock out a baby hat on my commute.
When people ask, my answer is usually “if you buy the materials”.
My coworkers haven’t had me teach them to knit, but I did persuade three of them to sign up for the beginner knitting class at our local yarn shop! Now, on lunch breaks, all five of us who knit will pull out our projects, and we have an impromptu knitting circle.
This is why I love the copy on the page for the Fourth Doctor scarf that ThinkGeek sells: they point out that it contains over 50,000 stitches. That it takes effort.
As someone who has knit all thirteen feet of that scarf (worth it), I also loved that copy.
The number of people who have seen it and asked me for one! I always tell them “I don’t even love my boyfriend that much.”
I did have a guy try to buy it off me. “It took me eighty hours. Minimum wage is over $9. You do the math.”
A cousin asked me, a week into December, to make hats for her family of 5. For their Christmas card photo. It’s knitting, not magic…
I told her if she bought the yarn, they could have hats for next Christmas’s car.
I just tell people “if you buy some yarn and bring it to me I will knit you that thing. If you don’t know how much or what kind to buy I will go yarn shopping with you.” No one has ever taken me up on that offer, so I’ve never had to knit something for a person who is otherwise Not On The List.
Oh no. I never let them buy the yarn for me. If I have to have my hands in a project for several hours, I want it to be something I am willing to work with. Please don’t buy me a cotton/acrylic blend with no give that I will hate pulling at for 10+hours.
I ask for a price point and a color palette preference, and let them okay the purchase. I get to go shopping with someone else’s money, and I don’t have to deal with yarn I hate.
Love your sentiment. I’m a painfully slow knitter and my time is valuable.
THOMAS, YOU ASS, YOU DON’T REJECT KNITTED GIFTS. Those socks will haunt you, as well they should.
As a knitter, I’m going to mention the phrase FISH LIPS KISS HEEL as a pretty good substitute for/method for avoiding doing traditional heel flaps and turns, and let that be my only comment or advice.
I was going to mention the Fleegle heel, if we’re collecting non-flap/wrap&turn heels. The regular heel flap approach can go pound sand.
oh gosh i can’t remember my favorite one. it’s a perfect curving arch that is technically short rows but looks so sweet and doesn’t leave any gapy holes between the wraps on the short rows. and the lady who invented it (or at least wrote it down/publicized it!) is the best No-Nonsense Great Auntie Knitter type. I love listening to her videos where she explains what she’s doing.
eta: the “sweet” in my description reminded me! it’s Cat Bordhi’s Sweet Tomato Heel. I’ve actually used her technique any time I’m doing shortrows and want it nice and solid and with an easy curve: http://catbordhi.com/books/cats-sweet-tomato-heel…
I can confirm, having met her in person, that Cat Bordhi is exactly that friendly and amazing in real life and makes you feel like you’ve been friends with her forever-ever-ever within, like, five minutes.
I am super delighted to hear that about Cat! I love it that someone who seems to approachable and friendly in their web presence/videos really is. 😀
I’m a fairly new knitter (less than two years knitting), and I would LOVE to learn to knit socks. Do you have a pattern you would recommend as a good First Sock? (Note: I am on Ravelry and can look it up).
The FLKH is pretty good as a basic sock pattern, honestly—it’s $1, and I’ve had good results. Some people think it’s excessive (it’s a 16-page document, but it includes all kinds of garment construction info, and has the pattern in both toe-up and ankle-down methods), but I skip to the relevant bits and it works great.
Socks are kinda funny in that you don’t really need a pattern unless you’re doing something lacy or in color-work, I think. All you need is basic understanding of where to put the heel, and if you’re doing toe-up, a closed cast-on (I recommend the “Hexipuff cast-on” that’s so popular because of the Beekeeper’s Quilt).
Good luck!
Your description of the first time you knit a sock heel is so spot on! It’s the most magical experience, and I think why sock knitting is so much more addictive than sweater knitting–same number of stitches but so much cooler accomplishments!
Also, I am shocked by Thomas; how could anyone do that with hand knitted socks! 🙁
Oh that is TRAGIC! I got so carried away on my first sock that having triumphantly turned the heel, I refused to believe the pattern and started the toe decrease way too soon. I now own one sock suitable for a lady with bound feet and have returned to crochet with my tail between my legs.
I made mine a pair but also was too impatient to actually believe how long my feet were–twice, in my case.
That such a beautiful meditation on stock knitting could ever be committed to paper, as it were. Somehow I wish I could have written that, as I find myself so much in these wide (minus the learning to knit stocks while drugged part)
Boo to Thomas, though. I bet he got bumped off the last of knitworthiness pretty quickly.
I am a knitter, and I audibly gasped at the disappearance of the socks. TRAVESTY.
The List of Knitworthiness is so real! Also true for cross-stitch and embroidery. Thomas needs to step on a LEGO.
If Thomas was wearing his handknit socks that lego would hurt a lot less!
I have a very tiny list of Embroidery-worthiness. My sister who crocheted me a dreamy leaf-green babysoft scarf is the ONLY permanent member.
The List of Knitworthiness is a thing. My list is very short as I’m not super into knitting right now (I know my interest will come back soon!) but I also have a List of Sewworthiness. The List caused a major fight once when a dude I had been dating for 3ish months suggested I make him a quilt. For his queen bed. And I laughed in his face.
Mine too! Mine is so short that it usually only includes me. And I regularly am too irritated with my own nonsense to justify the time and effort.
Oh gods, I am cringing at the very thought of that. Laughing in his face was absolutely the correct response, short of firing him into the sun.
I think one of the problems with the devaluing of Crafty Labor is that crafting is something that most people do in private, so it’s easy for non-crafters to think “it’s something out of nothing, it should be relatively inexpensive, and it’s fun to do and won’t take long.” When you get Entitled Dudeliness on top of that cluelessness, the levels of Blithely Offensive Ignorance approach metastasis.
HIS MOM WAS A QUILTER. (Sorry for yelling. I agree in general that non-crafters generally don’t get how much labor goes into making things, but this dude cannot be redeemed or excused.)
Noooooooo, Thomas!
It sucks when you take a risk on someone and they aren’t knitworthy. I’m still mad about a baby hat I gifted a year ago and never heard about again.
Oh, no, flashbacks! 🙁 🙁 My very first Baby Surprise Jacket that I made for my very first baby niece. My sister-in-law, who is generally 7/10 on the I-Can-Stand-That-Relation scale, took one look at it from the other room and said breezily, “Oh, that won’t fit her.”
I said, “Oh,” very softly and put it away again. it’s still in a drawer, awaiting a baby. Niece is 4.
I mean. Probably she was right, my niece was a big baby, but couldn’t she have made a little more pretense about it?
That is terrible, your SIL is terrible, and she should feel bad. I hope you soon come into the acquaintance of a different baby with un-terrible parents who will appreciate you and your talents.
This was lovely!
Now that The Toast has added knitting to it’s obsessions, I may never leave this site.
He tossed them in the back of the car and never saw them again??
WHERE IS THIS GUY HE NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON
all these comments are giving me visions of the taylor swift ‘bad blood’ crew but wearing hip glasses and cardigans. a Toast Posse Shall Hunt Tonight, and scour from the earth all men Unworthy Their Knits
Double pointed needles are very sharp and circular needles could be handily used as a garrote. Thomas won’t know what hit him.
Squad goals
#TricoteuseLife
The heel is why I started a Christmas stocking for my SIL the Christmas before last, and gave it to her this past Christmas. Also the fact that I was trying to reconstruct my grandmother’s pattern for a straight-knit stocking with a name and a Santa Claus face. But it was mostly the heel.
May every sock Thomas ever wears have poky toe seams and give him blisters and constantly slouch down into his shoe. Thomas, you are DEAD to me.
For real, Thomas. Were you raised in a DUNGEON?!?! Everyone CIVILIZED knows that even if the hand-knitted item does not fit AT ALL or is in a color you HATE, you still take it home and keep it with your Treasured Keepsakes That Prove Someone Thought About You. You do not chuck it in with the TRASH.
“May every sock Thomas ever wears have poky toe seams and give him blisters and constantly slouch down into his shoe.”
This! This is how to curse people. Nothing lethal, just exquisite irritation forever.
This right here is why I no longer knit gifts for people. I only have so much time to knit, folks, you think I’m gonna jump at the chance to knit you that beard hat you saw on Etsy when I could be making this beautiful, luxurious, custom-fit cardigan for me?
EXCEPTION: animal-themed toddler sweaters.
other exception (purely personal): fish-eating-your-head hats for people who will adore them properly
Oh my god OH MY GOD I WOULD ADORE THAT PROPERLY, I PROMISE.
(Actually, to be precise, the person who would adore it properly if I ever got my hands on one of those would be my housemate/childhood friend, as that would be a glorious denouement of an inside joke over twenty years old.)
I love those hats. My daughter (age 4) looked great in the one I made for her!
In proof that my mother is the best human I can ever hope to know: a year ago, my former coworker/good friend and his wife were expecting twins. I wanted to knit them something, and my mother suggested the Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket, saying “It’s just garter stitch! You’ll be fine!” (please note that this is my second knitting project EVER). Then, when she realized that there were twin babies, she volunteered to knit the second baby sweater for people she didn’t even know, because she wanted to help me do something nice for them. Now, little Charlotte and Amelia have coordinating pink-and-read sweaters, and my mother is on the shortlist for sainthood.
The socks I knit will only ever grace my feet for this reason. (I do make slippers for my mom, I am over 40 and I have not gotten over the need to show my mom all my art projects, and she is always satisfyingly impressed.)
I get so angry when people think women have less mathematical ability–so many traditionally female activities are super math-intensive. Knitting, sewing, cooking, baking, weaving, embroidery–all of them require huge amounts of mathematical skill, even if it doesn’t always look like the computations we learn to do in school. And a lot of it is done intuitively!
Baking is the reason I nailed AP Chemistry. Limiting reagents and stoichiometry are fairly instinctive when you have practice with looking in the fridge and saying “Well, the recipe says it serves twelve and requires six eggs, but I only have three–how much can I make and how do I alter the rest of the measurements to keep the ratios constant?”
Geez, Thomas. Why don’t you just twirl your mustache and tie her to the railroad tracks?
Knitworthiness is real. Though in my book, if a family member doesn’t wear your knitted gifts, it’s okay to steal them back. I knitted my first hat a couple months ago, a simple grey ribbed affair that was very nice and even. My boyfriend didn’t wear it, so… More knits for me, thank you!
Thomas is the worst. If someone made socks for me, I would keep them until long after I’d worn a hole in the toes.
THIS. My mother knitted socks for me and my sister a few years ago: my sister has worn a hole through hers but is never throwing them out. Mine are solely for wearing to bed in the winter, because 1) I don’t want to even try darning Fair Isle socks, and 2) they pair quite charmingly with my flannel winter pajamas.
I’m pretty sure those red Egyptian socks are naalbinding, not knitting. To me knowledge the first definitively knit artifact is a blue and white sock with geometric motifs.
I was popping in to say this exact thing. Knitting doesn’t show up until, like, the year 1000? Naalbinding is much earlier – there’s at least one hat from one of the Tarim mummies that was made that way.
I’m just surprised none of us got here earlier. So did anyone else have apoplexy when a crocheted rug was misrepresented as knitting on “Call The Midwife” that time?
I find naalbinding quite tedious.
Was that the blanket that they made for Chummy during the birth of her son? Also, I’m so glad to find another “CtM” fan–I am so digging this new season!
The nuns and midwives were shown “knitting” the crocheted blanket for Chummy: someone had gone and threaded granny squares onto pairs of knitting needles, somehow…
But if one is both a Sweater Knitter and resolutely against knitting for other people, and already has more sweaters than suitable for the climate in which she lives, what does one do?
Move.
<3 <3 <3
Frame them and hang them on the walls. See if a local traditional crafts museum is interested in an exhibit. Enter them in the county fair. Make or buy dolls, and then make sweaters for the dolls. Dolls never complain about being too hot, nor do they spill juice on their sweaters. Make sweaters for the furniture?
Cotton/linen sweaters? Knit tees?
Is it acceptable to give sweaters away after you’ve worn them for a while? So you’re still making them for *yourself* but eventually they can also have a good home somewhere cold?
It’s always safe to knit for kids and babies, I find. Even kids so big they approach adult sizes!
My own marriage survived a Sweater Curse but, truth be told, she never ever ever wears the sweater.
make sweaters for children and/or animals. Or donate them to a shelter.
THOMAS MIDDLE NAME LAST NAME YOU FIND THOSE SOCKS RIGHT NOW, OR I AM COMING DOWN THERE MYSELF.
I love this. I love how it is written. I love the topic. I love the wanderings into her personal history with knitting.
Most of all, I love that it is a final revenge against Thomas and declaration of her rightness!
“Perhaps it was the Vicodin, but I faced my virginal heel experience with a casual bravado.”
100% accurate, most people (including myself) take on their first heel with actual hand-quivers.
Which is crazy, because it makes SO MUCH SENSE after you do it. Oh, I just MAKE A THREE-DIMENSIONAL SHAPE of A HEEL by knitting some stitches and not others? OH. GOTCHA.
I’ve never knitted a sock and fear of the heel is at least 75% of that, so maybe I should get stoned and then try it. (I also just prefer heavier yarn weights.)
Slippers made out of heavier yarn are wonderful and knit up pretty quickly! I knit my mom a new pair every Xmas because she wears them nonstop.
Turning a heel for the first time is probably the most like a wizard I have ever felt? You doubtfully pore over the ancient scroll, confused about how powdered eye of newt could possibly get you a bunny but whatevs, you follow the inscription, and suddenly, there it is.
Can I have you in the room with me when I knit my first heel? You seem wise and tremendously soothing.
Where can I find that Barbara Kingsolver essay? I would like to read that.
https://orionmagazine.org/article/where-it-begins…
thanks!
Can’t believe I’m the first person linking to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUOgqefnt_I
(“Pardon Me, I Didn’t Knit That For You” by the folks at Mason Dixon Knitting….)
I’ve knit countless pairs of socks over the last 10 years, and turning still fills me with glee. I know how and why it works, but it still feels like a magical moment.
I feel that way about Kitchener stitch. It doesn’t seem like it should work and then it magically looks like you knit right around the end of the toe!
I present to other knitters the most useful way I’ve found to shut down the question “Hey, when are you gonna knit something for me?!”:
“Soon as you make me a bookcase. It takes about the same amount of time.”
If a total stranger asks this of you, thinking he’s hilarious (because if it’s a stranger in public it is always a dude asking this question) it is also helpful to burst into disbelieving, barely suppressed laughter before you say it.
Interestingly, anyone I know who actually does enough woodworking to appreciate handwork usually thinks it’s a pretty fair offer.
We’ve all got knitworthy lists. It’s true. And one can never have too many hand-knit socks.
One minor nit – that historical Egyptian sock was not made by knitting as we know it today. It was done in nalebinding – a technique that uses a threaded needle but produces a very knit-like texture. Old scholarship was unable to tell the difference, so lots of older reference books contain this very common error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A5lebinding
idk, I feel like the fate of the socks was sealed before they ever began to appear in physical form. The answer to “are you ever going to make anything else,” especially from a man, especially while a woman is discussing her feelings on screen, is something along the lines of “why would I when I can use this festive dishcloth to stuff your mouth shut?”, not “let me spend many hours and lots of intellectual labor on your behalf.”
Yes. Yes. YES.
Not willing to listen to Katharine Hepburn? Not sufficiently amused by what your companion is knitting? Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, Thomas.
I’ve been knitting for 16 years, and turning as sock heel is still magical, to me.
Also, an easier way to deal with washing hand-knit socks, as long as the yarn is superwash: I wait until I have a few pairs in need of a wash, and then chuck them into a lingerie bag and wash them in the washing machine on cold, then take them out of the bag and drape them on the clothes-drying rack to dry. Gets ’em nice and clean without the hassle of hand-washing them.
Idk I knit my first socks at age 8 (I was featured on The Yarn Harlot! Do people still read that blog? Stephanie used to post [still does?] pictures of people she met at signings who presented their first pair) and I don’t remember the heel being hard? I’ve only knit a couple more pairs since then, but even so. Then again, I wasn’t using a pattern, just my mom, who owned a yarn store and is an acknowledged Master of Knitting. But my first sweater at age 16 took me over a year and was awful and I’m never going to knit one again (except for my future children who will probably be on my knitworthiness list but I can’t promise anything). I’m sticking with hats.
Okay, I might need your knowledge and guidance on sock knitting. In exchange, I will gladly show you how to knit a Baby Surprise Jacket for future offspring (it’s basically all garter stitch, which is how my mother–the Friendly Neighborhood Knitting Pusher–convinced me it was a totally reasonable project for someone whose entire knitting background consisted of two scarves).
I love Baby Surprise Jackets! My parents knit them all the time. A scaled up version probably would’ve been a better idea for my first sweater, but alas I was making one from some Harry Potter knitting magazine and it had knitted owls across the back and thus involved charts, which was A Mistake. The sweater came out okay, but I had to swear off knitting for a year. Unfortunately, I became enamored of the idea of knitting identifiable objects and spent it trying to find a good shawl pattern with not-too complicated charts. Now I intend to look for yarn when I go to a yarn festival in a couple weeks, despite not having a pattern or free time. What am I doing?
After reading through all these comments, i feel like, “THOMAS” is now the Toast moniker for some dude who both makes a woman do something and then deprecates and disregards it when she does. Fucking Thomas.
Oh man. I am about to go directly from the two pairs of fairly vanilla socks I’ve made thus far to some totally crazy ones I saw on Ravelry and I’m doubting my sanity. It’s going to be great.
I have an acquaintance who casually asked me if I’d knit her something, and offered to pay, and was confused when I giggled at the offer. Um, sure, pay me an hourly rate for the 15+ hours it’s going to take me to make that lace shawl, yes, I bet that is what you are offering. It’s counter-intuitive but the very amount of time it takes to knit something means I only categorize them as gifts.
I am not a sock knitter–lace is my preferred madness–but this essay almost makes me want to give it a try.
Thomas was *clearly* going to be trouble when he opened with “can you knit anything else”? That’s a man who was never going to properly appreciate the time and energy of a pair of handknit socks. Clearly your sister could do better.
Lace addict fistbump solidarity. *goes back to the Niebling shawl I’ve been knitting since August of 2014* O god it’s only at 50%
In the course of knitting the Rock Island Shawl, I ripped back the same 10 rows for the fifth/sixth/I lost count-th time. My husband asked me if perhaps I would care to pursue a more relaxing hobby, such as juggling chainsaws.
The shawl I knit after that one (Nymphaeum) was a dream and I didn’t make a single mistake in it.
If only I actually wore the shawls. 🙂
I took up knitting the first weekend in April.
I blame the toast.
I MUST KNOW. What yarn are those rainbow socks made from???
Noro 🙂
Thomas is actually #TheWorst.