Clothing Worth Owning

When I was a child, my mom bought my family’s socks at inexpensive stores, and in the 1970s, that meant thin socks made of synthetic something, or white tube socks with striped cuffs in the school colors. When I was small, she mended these socks: she used a light bulb as her darning egg, stretching each heel tight before stitching the hole shut. As we grew older, the socks weren’t worth repairing and she could just as easily buy new ones.

Later when I bought hiking boots for a summer in Colorado, the salesman told me I needed ragg wool socks, which would need to be handwashed. I was skeptical, but I put them on with my new boots, and my feet boasted gray ragg wool for the next several years—I loved that the socks kept my feet warm, not only in the Rocky Mountains, but in the damp and cool months back at college.

A college friend lent me a cable-knit wool sweater that she wasn’t wearing, with leather patches on the elbows, and I tried to keep it for myself—my own sweaters were like my socks, synthetic stuff, not warm, not cozy. Surely she wasn’t wearing this ONE of her many beautiful wool sweaters? It had a little hole in one of the arms—surely she could part with this flawed sweater? The time came to return it, of course. With my first real paycheck from my first professional job, I took a bus to State College PA, where I bought a wool sweater at a South American import shop, in bright patterns of magenta, black, purple and orange. For months, I plucked the knitter’s long black hair from the stitches, and I was charmed to think of her, spinning the yarn as she walked along the road. A friend who had been to Peru told me that a traveler can find knitters in the market—a trio will measure the length of your arms and torso, then two women will knit the sleeves while the third knits the body of the sweater. You come back at the end of the afternoon and pay for your custom sweater—with bright smiles as the knitters pluck their own hairs from the final product.

I still own that sweater. I mended it and mended it, carefully matching the yarns with each repair. It’s no longer a great fit for me, but I will pass it along to my daughter after one more round of mending. 

What kind of clothing lasts? What kind of clothing is worthy of our attention?

The Circular Sock Knitting Machine

From the moment I heard about antique circular sock knitting machines, I knew.

I heard rumors, first, on a knitter’s discussion forum, in the early days of internet access—in the days when no one posted photos because photos took too long to load. I was seeking patterns for hand-knit socks, when someone described a 19^th century sock machine. I first witnessed a real machine six or seven years ago at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool festival. The owner was just getting ready to pack the machine home—it was tired, and things were beginning to go wrong with the knitting, she said, but she did show me how it worked, just before it skipped a bunch of stitches and she packed it up. She said these little knitters are “persnickety,” which was my mother’s word for me—particular, not easy to steer. 

Later I searched an online directory of CSM teachers, and I invited a nearby teacher to demonstrate her work at my children’s school. Then I found a group of CSM knitters that meets monthly on the southern border of New Hampshire, and I heard about new manufacturers making sock-knitter designs from antique machines. I kept doing research. I am not the kind of person who can drop $2000 on a new hobby—but a new machine would cost $1500 or more, and yarn would cost more.