Really high-end socks

[416 Rigby]

Some very nice socks at Westley Richards. Some are House of Cheviot, but the more expensive ones are really something. Caution! Prices are not for the faint of heart.

https://store.westleyrichards.com/us...ies/socks.html

[room2ndfloor]

Those prices are truly moderate for the work involved. Socks like that are made partly by machine, and are hand-finished.

Consider the cost of hand-knits that several of us here on XMarks make: The nice wool yarn retails for $8 to $12 for a 50-gram hank. Five such hanks go into one pair of men's kilt hose, so that is $40 to $60 just for the yarn. Then, roughly forty hours of skilled knitting, at $20 per hour (plumbers charge more), that's $800 of labor. Then, equipment: two circular knitting needles at $16 each, a crochet hook, a yarn needle for grafting.

Somebody reading this thought knitting to be an inexpensive hobby!

Granted, House of Cheviot has a wholesale source for the wool. Still, they are offering these hose at a fair price.

[Voussoir]

Ordering tobacco and ginger yarn!
Those are stunning. Finishing the tops on a pair of full fashion fire fighters memorial tartan hose. Already spun the marl for a pair of dice. Will be about six months until I get to these. LOL

[Voussoir]

Ordering tobacco and ginger yarn! (Or whatever green and orange is on sale)
Those are stunning!
Finishing the tops on a pair of full fashion fire fighters memorial tartan hose. (Knitting for a year on those). Already spun the marl for a pair of dice, which I'll do toe to calf on a circular knitting machine, and calf increases by hand. Will be about six months until I get to these. LOL

Room2ndfloor your hose are beautiful. Love your balmoral also.

[The Wizard of BC]

Even at wholesale prices - (I know I have some inbound as I type this) - custom dyed yarns are very expensive. One hank is $12.00cdn-$15.00cdn for 455 yards or 100grams.

My kilt hose take twice this for one pair. Each sock weighs 90-98 grams.

House of Cheviot use large, computer controlled flat bed machines. They have other machines to seam and to attach cuffs. When I visited them they were making a lot of socks per day. Each and every day.

On my Hand Cranked Sock Knitting Machine it takes about 4-5 hours for each sock. I have 7 manual needle changes per sock and manually finish the toes with what is known as a Kitchener stitch. (Yep, named after Lord Kitchener)

If I put cabling down the leg like some of these I would easily double or triple the time to make each pair.

In contrast the socks you can buy at WalMart are made in China on machines that cost thousands of dollars each but turn out socks at the rate of hundreds per day.

This is a far cry from doing all this knitting by hand.

I wonder how many people actually know what goes into making just a regular sock?

Maybe this will help.

https://youtu.be/vLeFvwY4iNw

And this is the video that got me started.

https://youtu.be/KLS8PxWPhlU

[Terry Searl]

Thanx for the wee movies Steve.......It is wonderful to see such talented people but as is often the case they make their efforts look too easy.....I remember my mother knitting us wool socks for the winter but she just used 4 (or was it three) needles. She would do this while watching our brand new black and white TV and usually had a cigarette perched on her lips........it seemed like her knitting the socks was nothing to my brother and I .......I think we were more fascinated in how long the ash on her cigarette could get before it fell off or she knocked it off into the ashtray .....heh! heh! By golly I grew up in the most marvelous of times