Wednesday, March 7, 2007



So I was thinking about the argyle socks my mother knit for my dad back in the day, when they were engaged. The socks are amazing -- a real testament to what women did for their men in the era before hard-core television watching and (presumably) having lots of sex. Above are more simple versions. And below, more complicated ones:




The color combinations are kind of unusual. I wondered how she decided on brown, white, cream, red, and green (wouldn't have been my first choices). And then I found this really great vintage sock knitting booklet, which is one of my favorites. The argyle sock on the cover is just this color scheme. JWR thinks maybe they had kits, which is a good theory.


Not a great photo (and how do you rotate, anyway??). My mom was telling me that she knit these socks in college. She went to an all girls' school and said that during lectures it was difficult to hear the professor because everyone's bobbins were "click-clacking" away. Funny that now the click-clacking in classrooms comes from people typing on their computers. WW

2 comments:

kristin said...

Great socks! Great book. Yeah, back in the day when more people did things from scratch...I bet some of it was from necessity, not just interest, but what a testament of care.

kristin said...

Hey WW, how many sitches per inch on those socks your mother made? I bet that she was using #0s. Wowwie wow wow wow!