The Ghosts of Socks Past

Actually, these are my old sock blockers, picked up at various garage sales. They clearly date from the days when women* washed their husbands' socks by hand and hung them on the clothesline to dry (there is a handy hanging hook at the top of each). The ones on the left have the added feature of being adjustable in length, though I find in practice that the adjustment thingummies have a tendency to snag the inside of a damp sock being pulled onto it.

They are clearly sized for men's socks. It would be a very tight fit to get anything smaller than a Woman's size 10 onto them. Fortunately (!), I wear a 10. So I have put them to use. It's not as though I feel socks need blocking with every wash. The blockers just speed up the drying time on "hand wash only" numbers. The routine used to be: wash in the sink, put in the salad spinner to remove excess moisture, stretch on the sock blockers and hang to dry.

I say "used to be", because these days I work mostly with superwash yarn. I wear hand knit socks every day. Putting seven pair a week through the routine got to be a drag.

*Yes, it's perfectly possible that men washed and blocked their own socks. I'm betting that the married ones had their wives do it 99.9% of the time. And I'm betting that most women dumped the sock blockers as soon as automatic dryers and synthetic socks became available.