Making Socks Fit Better

I think you'll like them.

HIgs, Kather> Thank you Katherine. I found Patons "Happy Feet" and "Pull up your

Wow! THere must be a story to that, Stella.

Higs, Kather> I was never taught how to make socks ,but I was cooking for a family

Way to go on the socks, Katherine! I used the same yarn (well, the same brand and color - I couldn't very well use the SAME yarn now, could I?) for my first sock just a couple weeks ago. It is still a lone sock due to its lack of fit and some tendonitis in my elbow, but now I've found a person who can wear it, so I will make it a make soon.

Joy

Sorry - that should be "make it a MATE soon." Too many student papers today!

Joy

It's _Meg Swansen's Knitting_. Actually, what's in the book is Meg's slightly different version, and a photograph of EZ's original socks. EZ never wrote the pattern down. Meg derived it from the one pair EZ knitted that way, but I'm pretty sure she made some small changes to the toe.

=Tamar

When I was a kid, that was one of the things they taught in (mandatory) Home Ec. classes. I'm nowhere near ready for a nursing home.

On Thu, 11 May 2006 14:59:39 +0200, B Vaughan spewed forth :

My mother didn't need HomeEc. She learned from her mother how to cook, sew, iron, etc. Home Ec is, I think, an invention of women my mother's age who went out into the world to work and knew their offspring would be ignorant of the home arts without some sort of instruction at school.

I graduated from high school in 1983. The "mandatory" HomeEc class for me happened during grade 7 in 1978 or 1979, was one whole semester long and included such esoterica as how to make a Jello salad, how to make a pizza crust, how to reattach a button and how to hand-tack a blind hem. Darning wasn't on the syllabus.

My younger sister attended the same three schools I did (elementary, junior high, senior high). When she got to grade 7 in 1981 HomeEc was an elective. By 1985 when she graduated high school the Home Ec room in the junior high had been renovated into a teacher lounge and Home Ec wasn't even an elective anymore.

Unfortunately our mother refused to teach my sister and I much beyond "how to boil a hotdog and macaroni" (back in the days before everybody could afford a microwave). She was a liberated woman and so would we be, so we didn't need to know how to do for ourselves: we'd be working, making lots of money and pay other people to do for us.

*cough*

Fortunately Granny took us under her wing and taught us how to be competent people: how to make dinner starting with a clucking chicken and vegetable garden; how to drive stick; how to properly beat a carpet; how to change the oil in the car; how to split wood; how to make lemon polish and how to use it. Granny was practical and taught us practical things.

Based on my conversations with classmates at high school reunions I can generalize and say that most of the women my age don't do any sort of handwork. Those who do any handwork at all view it as a novelty or a hobby and deprecate their work to an astounding degree when complimented on their skills. After all, our mothers fought to escape the stereotype of "homemaker" and everything associated with it. Any homemaking-sort of skill that isn't cooking or cleaning must just be a hobby these days, right?

Uh oh, I see a soapbox coming. I'll shut up now.

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET. This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%. Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

me an you both then Stella, I had four brothers and a mother who'd had a

430 No such article 222 33662 body me an you both then Stella, I had four brothers and a mother who'd had a stroke, they all came home to be with myself and one of the brothers living at home, and i ended up looking after them...lol

Needless to say the welfare of the day were non too impressed, and put me into care....(must have been my cooking that done it)

higz Cher

430 No such article 222 33662 body me an you both then Stella, I had four brothers and a mother who'd had a stroke, they all came home to be with myself and one of the brothers living at home, and i ended up looking after them...lol

Needless to say the welfare of the day were non too impressed, and put me into care....(must have been my cooking that done it)

higz Cher

didn't know there were cheeks that far round...lol

LOL but you make us giggle Els...what more in life could we want to cheer us all up.. higz cher

Oooh you *are* awful, but I like you (pushing very hard in the way of Dick Emery!!) Love & higs (blushing delicately) Christine

How about a milk crate......just to laugh with you though.

I think that most likely you are correct for North Americans. Maybe it was done less even in Europeans well at that time. When I went to school it was part of public schooling. I went to Montessori school as well as to Public school. I also went through 5 years of war. Once or twice a week you were doing some knitting, crocheting etc. Origami, was done through all school years, and I find that my grand children got introduced to that in school as well, and also at an early age. Cooking was another one, and again my kids and the grand children also do cooking in school. Knitting today is so in that you see it everywhere, and therefore it is also picked up in teachings in schools. These things come and go, but are also subject to where you live, and grew up. When our kids grew up in the sixties and seventies, the mothers who came to help in the school would be the teachers of knitting, weaving, origami, copper enameling and many other crafts and hand on teachings. I lived in a Italian neighbourhood, that was changing over to a Greek neighbourhood. I can still see Mina, our neighbour crocheting on her front porch. All the neighbours around us knitted, sewed etc. When you would travel on the subway, or other public transportation, there were always knitters etc. Hey wooly maybe I was a textile magnet, no matter where I went I would meet up with other textilers...

OK I am no stepping off my crate.....LOL

Els

I guess I'm just a poor ignorant slob who was forced to take Home Ec. Not everybody is lucky enough to be your mother.

We (during the 1950's) had mandatory home ec twice a week from 4th grade through 8th grade. In 9th grade we were allowed to choose between home ec and other things such as basic first aid.

We learned lots of useful things, including sewing (with an old treadle machine), mending, hemming, and basic embroidery. No knitting or crocheting, unfortunately. In cooking, we mostly learned the basics that could be extended to make other dishes. One of the things I learned to make was a basic white sauce, and how to use it as the foundation for a cheese sauce or a cream soup. My family was an immigrant family and such things as white sauce seemed very exotic and elegant to me. I remember showing my mother how to make it, although I don't think she ever used it to embellish our overcooked vegetables or boiled potatoes.

Only girls took home ec. The boys took "shop" where they learned woodworking and other manly skills. One year (I think it was 6th grade) they made the boys take home ec for half the year and the girls took shop. It must have been one of the first feminist impulses. (It would have been about 1956.) I already knew most of the woodworking skills, because my father was a skilled carpenter and I was his little helper. He had three girls before he got a son, and made me into a surrogate son.

My mother could have used HomeEc. She only worked when she had to (between husbands), but she was totally clueless how to cook, sew, etc. I learned how to crochet from an aunt, and I learned how to cook the way my family likes once I was on my own.

We had what our junior high school called "mini courses". Rather than

9 weeks, it was 7 weeks, and we rotated through all kinds of classes. In order to be gender correct, all the girls and boys had to take everything, and the classes were typing, cooking, sewing, woodshop, metal shop, and mechanical drawing. There might have been others, but those are the ones I remember best. I still have the stool and magazine rack I made in woodshop.

I also had honors art in jr. high, and we did all kinds of crafts in there, not just drawing, so we also did things like designing and painting murals around the entire school, and we had a table loom learned weaving.

Alas, there was no knitting or crocheting going on in any of those classes, but I was doing a lot of crocheting on my own by then, knitting came later.

I'm just really glad to see how hip they are to do now.

Leah