What color socks?

[maillemaker]

So I'm looking at 19th-century machine knitted socks from Wambaugh, White & Co, an approved vendor.

Is any color more appropriate than any other color for a CS impression?

Thanks,

Steve

[FloridaConscript]

Steve,

Dan and Brian are not going to offer non period colors. There really isn't a way to discern which color is more appropriate than another. After a couple marches they all look dirty and smell bad. I'd go with what is available at the time.

[maillemaker]

Thanks!

Steve

[Secesh]

And they all get that faded, marched in worn look...

[KarinTimour]

Dear Mr. Roberts:

You wrote:
"There really isn't a way to discern which color is more appropriate than another. "

Actually, my research has been that the most common color for socks for soldiers, North or South, was blue. In our time period, someone seeing a woman knitting a blue sock instantly assumed that she was knitting a soldier's sock -- they were often referenced as "THE blue Army stocking." While we might think that "only Federal soldiers wore blue" -- the truth was that indigo was a very common, cheap and easily available dyestuff in most parts of the South. Those of us over the age of 30 have the same knee-jerk response when someone describes an item as being "Army green"-- we start thinking of a sort of brownish pea green.

Those women knew (just as you stated) that those socks were going to be treated badly, often filthy and seldom washed. Indigo will give a dark, permanent color that will help to hide the dirt . Thus "army blue socks" extremely common, even in the Confederacy.

I'd also venture to say that all shades of natural sheep's fleece would be common in Confederate socks as well. Sheep come in a variety of colors, often gray, brown, tan and black. By 1862 women were spinning up fiber they'd salvaged from the inside of mattresses, shredding scraps left over from making Confederate uniforms and re-spinning the fiber, and unraveling pre-war woolen goods. Wool used to stuff a matress would likely be grayish from age or gray/brown from the natural color of the sheep. Scraps from Confederate uniforms could run the spectrum from the cadet blue-gray of imported fabrics used to make NC uniforms, through every shade of brown or butternut from home dyes in the fabric. By very late war, I doubt anybody was dyeing wool for socks -- the need was so great, no one cared how dirty they'd look. Socks got knit in the color it came off the sheep. Mrs. Robert E. Lee was a legendary knitter, and was constantly shipping socks to the Army of Northern Virginia. Friends and relatives were scouting for sock yarn for her and sending it from all over the South. The Museum of the Confederacy has the sock she was working on when she heard that the Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered. It's an undyed cream wool, and still on the needles.

Straying off topic from the original question, (which was for a CS impression), we do have documentation that in addition to blue socks, the Federal army also utilized gray ones as well. The United States Sanitary Commission, which was a non-profit voluntary organization organized by Federal civilians to support their Army stated in some of it's patterns that they recommended darker colors, as being less likely to show dirt. They actively discouraged sending white or cream colored socks.

All of that being said, in the 1860s, just as in the present day, there were men who liked to cut a dash with color, and we know that yellow, purple, red and a whole host of other colors were certainly worn. But they weren't the most common choice for solider's socks.

My two cents,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: KTimour@aol.com

[Mrs Paul L Muller]

Karen,
Thank you so very much for this in depth, insightful presentation of the common knitted sock for the CW.

I am a spinner myself and this information is much appreciated.

I know of the common-ness of indigo, but what with the wonderful color we can get in our wool by use of natural, botanical means, I couldn't imagine that there had to be a wife and/or society or three that would dye using botanical means to give their soldiers a more colorful sock.

[The Chesterfield Rifleman]

Hello,
I had a quick question for you Karen. Was there a federal issue pair of socks is circulation, or was it just any pair of socks the goverment could make in rapid sucession?

Also, you stated that out of all the colors of socks in production, dark blue was the most common, right?

Just making sure.

[Curt Schmidt]

Hallo!

Just a quick aside...

As shared, while there are two colors of sheep- white and black... the range of color between say white and black natural undyed wool runs a nice range of whites through grays to tans to browns to graphite to dirty black.

Curt

[Spinster]

Cyndi

The problem with home dyeing in the period is twofold.
(1) Shortage of mordants---period newspaper accounts in the Deep South repeatedly discuss mordant substitutes when the real chemicals were unavailable
(2) Shortage of quality dyes. As the best dyes tended to be imported exotic heartwoods, or cochineal bugs up from Mexico, blockade problems limited the supply.

Most sought after was logwood, and there are a variety of logwood substitutes in period
papers. I've cranked through the bulk of them, in quantities large and small and found them a sad, sorry substitute for logwood, weak in color and fugitive in time, as are most poorly mordanted goods.

Some effort was made for substitutes in the red range, with solfernio being the best example--and it was fugitive within the year.

So, in looking to the use of local botanicals, consider both the limited color range and the fugitive nature of unmordanted or poorly mordanted colors. I've pulled some startling poison greens from southern root woods, only to see them disappear by the second day.

Most substantives (dyes which require no mordant) produce colors in the brown range.

I've often wondered if the dye which produced Forrest's jibe to troops of 'flicker, flicker, yellowhammer' was produced by Bois d'Arc or more colloquially 'bodoc' or 'fence'. It's startling vibrant yellow, even well mordanted, is light fugitive within weeks, quickly turning to an unremarkable tan.

[KarinTimour]

Hello,
I had a quick question for you Kim. Was there a federal issue pair of socks is circulation, or was it just any pair of socks the goverment could make in rapid sucession?

Also, you stated that out of all the colors of socks in production, dark blue was the most common, right?

Just making sure.

Dear Mr. Peli:

This will probably be far more information about Federal Issue socks than you'd ever want to know....

Disclosure: I do make Federal Issue stockings, and to the best of my knowledge, am the only vendor currently making them with hand knit heels and toes. I've not written what follows as an advertisement, nor do I want to set myself up as the Sock Authenticity Police, inspecting people's ankles. I offer it as research that I've found regarding period correct socks. Those who have met me in person know that I can talk your ear off on this topic.....


The Federal government didn't make socks -- the Quartermaster put advertisements in the newspaper, and solicited bids from private contractors. Much as the Federal Government does today.

The ads state some of the specifics -- how many socks they want a supplier to produce, and preferences on color (they generally specify gray or gray-blue). The Federal issue stocking was not a sock, it was half-hose -- translation: it was longer in the leg, and had no (or very little, like 1/2 inch) ribbing to hold it up. You either wore them with boots, tied them up with string, bloused your drawer or pant legs, or let them flop where they would. These are not socks made by hand -- they were machine produced. By the time of the Civil War, sock machines could be grouped into two varieities: circular sock machines, or knitting frames. Knitting frames were the older technology, having been invented in the 1500s. They produced a sock that had a seam that ran down each side of the foot. Circular sock machines had been invented and marketed by the late 1850s, were definately cutting edge technology and were aggressively marketed North and South. An important difference between CW circular sock machines and the ones you can purchase today on ebay is that 1860s machines weren't able to knit a heel and toe into a sock. They could knit a tube, however, which was a huge improvement over the frame-knit socks with seams down the sides of the foot.

Period correct socks had heels and toes that were knit in by hand.

Sock factories using circular sock machines hired hand knitters for miles around, and would drop off bundles of socks for heels and toes to be added. Basically, it was a four step process -- they'd knit up the leg, then send bundles of socks off to hand knitters to put in heels. Once the heels were knit on the sock legs, they would be returned to the factory to have the feet knit on by the machines. The unfinished socks were then returned to the hand knitters to have the toes added by hand. CW circular sock machines were incapable of making a heel and toe on the machine -- they physically could only knit in one direction. Modern circular sock machines (those made after about 1872) can knit both forwards and backwards, making it possible to knit a heel and toe into the sock in one piece. The toe on a sock made with a modern circular sock machine is then either sewn closed with a sewing machine, or with a binder machine, leaving a seam across the wearer's toe knuckles. It can also be hand sewn shut using what hand knitters call a "Kitchner stitch" or "grafting." This avoids the seam across the wearer's toe knuckles. Modern socks are made the same way today, and if you fish a pair of socks from Walmart out of your sock drawer, you can see the short-row construction. The sock is made up of stitches, all of which are alighned in little verical columns over the surface of your sock. In a sock with a short-row heel, when the stitches get to the heel, they make a sharp right angle turn. You can also see a diagonal line that points from the end of the heel toward the top of the sock, at the angle where the stitches make their right angle turn. The stitches then run horizontally along the sides of the sock until close to the toe. If you lay the sock flat on a table and look at the toe, you'll see that the stitches make a sharp U turn, forming the toe. These are the hallmarks of a short-row heel and toe. This is hard to describe in words, and if you are a non-knitter, I"m sure much of it reads like Greek.

I wrote an article for the Camp Chase Gazette all about how to identify period correct heels and toes. It was published in 2011, I think in the fall. Will look up the specifics tonight when I get a chance and post it here.

Frame knit socks were knit in a flat sheet -- the leg was knit as one flat piece, and had to be sewn up the back of the leg. When the machine got to the ankle, the sheet of flat knitting that would become the sock was split into three segments -- one long tongue, with two much smaller flaps on either side. The long tongue would become the part of the sock which would cover the top of the foot. The two smaller flaps on either side of it would become the two sides of the heel. Once this was made, the piece of knit goods which would become a sock was removed from the knitting frame and given to a hand knitter. She/he would sew up the sock leg, making a tube, and then take the two smaller flaps, sew them together down the back of the heel and then using knitting needles, by hand close the bottom of the heel, using what is called a three needle bind off. This would leave a ridge down the middle bottom of the heel. To modern eyes this looks like a seam. But it's not sewn, it's knitted, and if it is done properly, it will hinge open when you step on it, rather than being a hard ridge that will cause a blister. The partial sock was then put back on the knitting machine, and a second "tongue" was knit over the bottom of the sock. At this point you had a sock leg, with a finished heel, and two strips of fabric that will eventually become the sock foot. I think the sock foot at this stage looks rather like a crocodile's mouth -- or, to give another visual, it looks like someone sliced the sock foot open, horizontally, through the sides. The sides of the sock are then either sewn shut with a sewing needle or knit shut, leaving a seam or ridge inside the sock the length of the foot. At the end of the toe, the sock is hand knit closed using a three needle bind off, leaving about a two inch ridge right across the ends of the toes (not across the knuckles of the tops of your toes, but across the very tips of your toes).

There are no functioning knitting frames in this country. There are still a few in Britain, mostly in industrial museums. If you do a search on youtube for "knitting frames" you can find some short clips of them in use.

Very few vendors using circular sock machines will hand knit in the heels and toes. Because of this, the majority of us are wearing socks with short-row heels and toes. The reality is that it takes a long time to knit heels and toes by hand at the fine gauges that were used in our time period, and it's not economically feasible for most sock makers.

Color:
Certainly we know that the Federal government was issueing blue socks, gray sock and gray/blue socks. I strongly suspect that as the war wound on, they weren't too picky on colors. But in terms of what was absolutely PEC for socks -- the culture says it all. Just as those of us of a certain age know what "army green" is --and if we see someone knitting a pea green sock, it would likely make us wonder if she were knitting a sock for a soldier. With the modern army's switch to desert tan, if you are in a town with a base, and you see someone knitting a sock of that color, you'd probably make the same assumption. In the 19th century, the "blue army stocking" was so common, if a woman was seen knitting a blue sock, it was assumed she was knitting it for someone in the army. Do a google search on "blue army stockings" in any website that features periodicals of the 19th century, and you'll be hip deep in poetry, songs, etc.

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com