The joy of socks
Apr. 14th, 2026 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI will knit a pair of socks for pretty much anyone I know, if they ask; but fitting them is something of an art, and I do need measurements to be taken in a particular way, mostly so I know where to turn the heel. What I need you to do if I'm knitting socks for you is to stand on a piece of thickish cardboard (not too thick to cut - a flap from a cardboard box is pretty much ideal), and get someone else to draw round your foot with a marker. I then need them to put a mark on the outside of the foot, directly below the centre of your ankle bone. You can now either give/send me this piece of cardboard, or, if that's awkward, you can take certain measurements from it that I can then use for calculations; and - this is important - I need them in cm. Granted, I can convert easily enough, but all those calculations work in metric, even though they were originally designed by an American. This is probably because you'd end up multiplying by some very weird fraction if they were in inches.
The purpose of the calculations is to double-check that you've got your ankle bone mark in the right place, because this is crucially important. If your ankle bone mark is wrong, I will be turning the heel in the wrong place, which is going to be a problem. The position of the heel turn is related to the width as well as the length of the foot, because the width of the foot is closely related to the thickness of the ankle; so someone with shorter but narrower feet may need the turn in about the same place as someone with longer but wider feet. It's a fairly exact science.
Well, so Porthos wanted a pair of socks, and I said "fine, I can do that," and sent him a two-page PDF with lots of diagrams explaining exactly what I needed him to do. What I got back was "my feet are fairly wide and about a size 11."
No, Porthos. No, no, no. That is not going to help me fit a sock. I told him so, and sent him the PDF again.
Our Porthos has many sterling virtues. Patience is not one of them. I'm sure he took one look at the instructions and thought "too complicated, can't be bothered with that." So, this time, he sent me the length of his foot (which I needed) and the width at the widest point (which I hadn't specifically requested). In inches. He's nine years younger than I am - why is he even still using inches?!
I heaved a sigh. This was just going to have to do. So I converted it into cm, took the corresponding measurements for my own feet so I knew how much to increase the width (my feet are pretty narrow), and also pulled up the example measurements from the PDF, which were taken from a real foot. Armed with all this, I did a very rough and ready, seat-of-the-pants calculation to work out where his heel turn ought to go; it turned out to be pretty close to where mine goes, in the end. I'm still not 100% certain I've got it right, but I did give it my best shot, so if they don't fit quite right it won't be my fault.
I would also very much like to knit socks for Athos and d'Artagnan. However, Athos simply isn't interested in hand-knitted socks (to be fair, he does have diabetic neuropathy in his feet, so he probably needs special ones of some sort), and d'Artagnan is rather complicated for reasons I won't go into here. If I did knit socks for him, I think I'd have to increase the width at the tops, since he's a cyclist; this means not only that he has disproportionately massive calves, but also that he's inclined to stuff his trousers down his socks so they don't get caught in the chain, and that requires extra width too. I hope to be able to do that some day.
Meanwhile, the cold - to use a classic SCA word - abides. It is mostly just squatting in my head; I keep expecting a runny nose, but in fact I haven't really had that yet. I'm just bunged up, coughing a bit, sneezing a bit, and feeling rough.
But I do have socks to knit!
The purpose of the calculations is to double-check that you've got your ankle bone mark in the right place, because this is crucially important. If your ankle bone mark is wrong, I will be turning the heel in the wrong place, which is going to be a problem. The position of the heel turn is related to the width as well as the length of the foot, because the width of the foot is closely related to the thickness of the ankle; so someone with shorter but narrower feet may need the turn in about the same place as someone with longer but wider feet. It's a fairly exact science.
Well, so Porthos wanted a pair of socks, and I said "fine, I can do that," and sent him a two-page PDF with lots of diagrams explaining exactly what I needed him to do. What I got back was "my feet are fairly wide and about a size 11."
No, Porthos. No, no, no. That is not going to help me fit a sock. I told him so, and sent him the PDF again.
Our Porthos has many sterling virtues. Patience is not one of them. I'm sure he took one look at the instructions and thought "too complicated, can't be bothered with that." So, this time, he sent me the length of his foot (which I needed) and the width at the widest point (which I hadn't specifically requested). In inches. He's nine years younger than I am - why is he even still using inches?!
I heaved a sigh. This was just going to have to do. So I converted it into cm, took the corresponding measurements for my own feet so I knew how much to increase the width (my feet are pretty narrow), and also pulled up the example measurements from the PDF, which were taken from a real foot. Armed with all this, I did a very rough and ready, seat-of-the-pants calculation to work out where his heel turn ought to go; it turned out to be pretty close to where mine goes, in the end. I'm still not 100% certain I've got it right, but I did give it my best shot, so if they don't fit quite right it won't be my fault.
I would also very much like to knit socks for Athos and d'Artagnan. However, Athos simply isn't interested in hand-knitted socks (to be fair, he does have diabetic neuropathy in his feet, so he probably needs special ones of some sort), and d'Artagnan is rather complicated for reasons I won't go into here. If I did knit socks for him, I think I'd have to increase the width at the tops, since he's a cyclist; this means not only that he has disproportionately massive calves, but also that he's inclined to stuff his trousers down his socks so they don't get caught in the chain, and that requires extra width too. I hope to be able to do that some day.
Meanwhile, the cold - to use a classic SCA word - abides. It is mostly just squatting in my head; I keep expecting a runny nose, but in fact I haven't really had that yet. I'm just bunged up, coughing a bit, sneezing a bit, and feeling rough.
But I do have socks to knit!
