It's News to Me: Blanking on Sock blanks

 

Most of the time I feel like I live under a rock. Perhaps it’s because I usually have my nose buried in a book or it could be that 99% of my time online is controlled by my gossipy, “have to know everything” evil twin self. But pandemic me has discovered that I have another hobby – Internet ‘window’ shopping (total mom joke). And while I believe that my yarn collection has grown enough to warrant adding it to my living trust, there is another thing that I have gained – knick knacks that I didn’t know existed. 

 

Each week I feel like I see my favorite LYS or influencer market something that I had no idea existed! Knitting pod? Count me in. little clay stitch markers? Yes please! A Sock Blank….wait what? I first saw it during the Rose City Yarn Crawl at a local shop, Ritual Dyes. And just recently I say KenYarn selling some blanks. But what are they? And why would I want a sock blank? 

 

Folks who dye yarn are quite familiar with sock blanks, but I’m not a dyer so I did what any millennial would do, I googled it. And google has spoken, they are essentially skeins of yarn that are cranked out in stockinette stitch using a knitting machine or a sock knitting machine that one can dye in patterns that would be hard to do otherwise. Once you dye your sock blank it is STILL called a sock blank.  And the purpose of the sock blank is simple, It’s much like the pro-life argument of a conservative, it’s a circular process. You unknit the sock blank as you are knitting your new garment (a sock, mittens, or whatever it is you want to knit).

 

It is not quite clear when sock blanks became a thing in the world of Instagram/internet. But machines that knit socks have been around since the 1800’s and circular knitting machines became quite popular during the civil war (1861 – yes I looked that up). And yarn dying in general was first recognized in Asia (china to be specific). But the process of dying blanks of fiber was first introduced by the French in the city of Lyons (https://revolutionfabrics.com/blogs/gotcha-covered/history-of-yarn-dyeing). Now if we put this information on a timeline we come to the conclusion that we still don’t know when the fuck it became a thing. But we do know that it’s been around for a long time but the internet makes us feel like it’s a cool new thing that we all need. 

 

Do we need it? I’m still not sure but they sure are cool!