Socks Apeal or New Socks.

Thank heaven for junk or ‘yard sale’ stores and the husbands who frequent them. My husband goes out, I don’t know where he is (he works at home) but he comes home with the faint odor of… no, not perfume, not booze but mildew from rooting through these establishments! Today he came home with a pile of neat stuff and one of the old knitting patterns was this one for ‘New Socks’.

This pattern is from Patons and Baldwins and was ‘especially designed’ for the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto by a Mrs. N. Jarvis Allen. It lookes like it was done in the what looks like the ’40’s… there’s no date on the pattern. The two styles are called ‘Grandstand’ where I have seen the Blue Jays, a rodeo and the Beach Boys, and the ‘Midway’ where I have staggered more than once vowing to stick to the mild ‘ghost train’ after spending too much time upside down spinning in the air miles (well… seemed like it)over the fairground.

The yarn to be used was P & B ‘Patonised’ wool. I’d love to hear from anyone who knows what that is!

The keen thing about these socks is that they are knit flat, working the upper, patterned part of the sock then working the toe, foot, heel and back leg afterwards and attatching.

Inside it says ‘Patent Pending’…. as this is the first time I’ve seen this way of knitting socks… well… I don’t think it … well … ‘took’. The upper part is knit from the back of the leg, around the front and over the instep then around to the back of the leg again. The foot has a panel that goes up between the two edges of knitting forming a closing panel at the back of the leg.

There’s just something satisfying about going round and round and round and round on those four needles…..