Way back… No. Way, way, waaaaay back, I went to the first ever TKGA (The Knitting Guild of America) convention in Dallas, Texas. It must have been in 1985. I took classes from knitting legends, Alice Starmore (Fair Isle Techniques), Barbara Walker (Mosaic Knitting), and Anne MacDonald, author of The Social History of Knitting (Argyle Knitting). My mom went with me and we had a very nice time.
Anne MacDonald said that argyle socks had seams and that’s all there was to it, because they had to be knitted back and forth. This was before we knew much about circular intarsia and other seamless methods.
I accepted this as truth, until one day, when I was walking down the sidewalk, I heard my own voice inside my head saying, “Wait a minute. My store-bought argyle socks don’t have seams!” This is known as a knitting revelation. I’m telling you this so you won’t ignore these gifts from your unconscious, which is certainly more observant and often more knowledgeable than we are.
After listening to me fret and fuss about this, my husband said, “Why don’t you unravel one of your store-bought argyle socks, and see how it was made?” He’s so smart!
So I did, and I could see how the thing was accomplished. I also wrote to a trade organization for hosiery manufacturers, and they were kind enough to send me an article about industrial argyle sock knitting. This was the beginning of my seamless argyle odyssey. I wrote an article for Threads magazine about it in 1992.
This colorful vest is a seamless argyle, too. I show the sides, so you can see there are no seams. And here’s what the inside looks like.
And October 2007, I’ll be teaching ‘Seamless Argyle Socks’ at Stitches East in Baltimore! Hurray! It’s a six-hour class, where we will complete a seamless argyle ankle sock out of worsted (medium/4) weight yarn. Then you go home and make the second sock for practice.
Hope to see some of you at Stitches!