“his mother knitted for me the most beautiful pair of heather colored socks that you ever saw…”

I’ve been slowly working on a project that is quite different from what I usually do. It’s a historical recreation of these handknit socks, which are part of a collection in Gettysburg College’s Special Collections and College Archives.

The recipient of the socks, Fritz Draper Hurd ‘16 (that’s Gettysburg College Class of 1916), served in the Army during World War I, including some time in the Medical Reserve Corps. In his memoir, he describes the socks:

“after the War, in 1919, his mother knitted for me the most beautiful pair of heather colored socks that you ever saw.  When you put them on and they stretched you could see holes through to the skin and still they were the warmest socks that I ever wore.  I have worn them only once and I am sure that they are about the house now and I propose getting ahold of them and you see now, they are over fifty years old, and I want to get a hold of them and attach the letter that she wrote to me when she sent them in 1919, saying that she credited me with saving her son’s life. Well, that is not quite true.”

You can see that they are in wonderful shape. The archivist told me they had never been worn. But when she had her back turned, I carefully turned them inside out, and discovered signs of wear at the ball and heel of the foot. You know how wool felts up a bit there when you wear handknit socks… Trust me, the socks are no worse for my handling! I examined them and scratched out a pattern.

The yarn is finer than our sock yarn today, closer to a laceweight. The CO number is 78 and it is worked top-down. The leg begins with a K2P1 ribbed cuff and then goes into the main stitch, which is a very simple lace pattern:

• Round 1 – *K2tog YO*
• Rounds 2-4 – K
• Round 5 – *YO K2tog*
• Rounds 6-8 – K

The laciness of the pattern surprised me for a man’s sock. Fritz noticed it, as well (“they stretched you could see holes through to the skin”). The heel appears to be an eye-of-partridge stitch (my favorite for heel flaps), and the gusset stitches are picked up in a familiar way.

The toe decrease is a regular wedge toe until the last 6 stitches or so.

The final bit is a 3-needle bindoff rather than the kitchener-style graft we are accustomed to today. Knitter’s lore has it that Earl Horatio Herbert Kitchener developed a sock technique with a grafted toe because it was more comfortable for the soldiers in his command. Supposedly, this technique was popularized during WWI… so maybe it hadn’t yet reached the maker of this sock.

The sock’s construction is pretty straightforward. The sock YARN, however, is not.

I wanted to source yarn with these characteristics:

• wool, or at least mostly wool
• heathered or at least semi-solid color (though I didn’t care about the exact color)
• fine enough to allow me to cast on 78 stitches and make a well-fitting man’s sock
• 3-ply (or more)

I didn’t find ANYTHING like this at MDSW last May. I was looking for yarn, but I also kept my eyes open for fiber that I might be able to spin into the right yarn (I was bolstered by my positive experience spinning a down breed into sock yarn). It turns out that down breeds are hard to find in fiber form, as farmers mostly know them as meat breeds. Since I was looking for prepared fiber (not a raw fleece), my options were few. I brought home some Clun Forest roving (yellow) and Dorset roving (green) from Solitude Wool, and a 90/5/5 Clun Forest/Romney/Alpaca roving blend (blue) from Singleton Fiber Mill (more on these purchases on my MDSW17 wrapup post). Note that all of those fibers were ROVING, not top. Ideally, sock yarn is made from top. But I was happy to give it a try.

I spun the Clun Forest blend last summer. Even though I spun it worsted style, I could not get it fine or even enough to serve as sock yarn. 

As we traveled through Maine during our summer vacation, I popped into every yarn store I could find. In desperation, I purchased some Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine. It seems finer than most sock yarn (at 433 yards per 100 grams) and comes in beautifully heathered shades, like this one called “Blueberry Mix.” It is 50% wool (good) – but also 30% nylon/polyamid (not historically accurate but adds strength) and 20% alpaca (adds drape… but will it make the sock droopy???). I wasn’t sure.

I still hadn’t cast on the socks when I went to WEBS in September for the Spinning Summit. I spent a long time scouring the shelves of the “fingering” area, and came up with another contender –  this Swans Island Sterling Collection yarn:

It is even finer than the Berroco stuff, at 525 yards per 100 grams. It has 3 plies. It is 85% organic merino and 15% alpaca, so nothing from the petrochemical world (I assume that’s more historically accurate). And it’s made in Maine, USA! While I was at WEBS, I also picked up some new needles. I normally knit socks on two, 2.0 mm circular needles, but I knew I would need to go smaller for these. I bought Addi Sock Rockets in the 1.75 mm size.

I’ve been working on the socks slowly. It turns out that they are not ideal travel companions for a road trip, as even slight bumps in the road cause this fine yarn to pop off the needles. I also don’t think they are great office knitting. And I can’t work on them for long periods, because these fine metal needles are hard on my hands. So I’ve got myself on a regimen of working 15 minutes a day… and little by little, progress is being made. The sock looks suspiciously poofy when it’s on the needles:

But it fits better when it’s on a leg. This is my leg, but these socks aren’t for me – so if you notice it’s a bit loose, don’t be alarmed!

(And yes, that is my ZickZack blocking in the background… more on that soon.)