I wanted to take a moment to put down some words about wool socks.
It is often been my experience that wool socks are maligned things. “They’re itchy,” I am told. “They look goofy,” they say. The intimation is that wearing wool socks brings with it immediate and irrevocable membership in some nebulous club that cares about recycling, saves kitchen scraps for the compost pile and is likely vegan. Plus wears socks with sandals.
Ignore all that. Here’s the thing:
Wool socks keep your feet warm.
There is more. Here in Pittsburgh, walking in the winter will, at least once, involve plunging a foot into an icy puddle. There will be traffic worth watching, and it will be dark, and that solid-looking pile of hardened snow will be but a delicate crust, through which a foot will go into several inches of remarkably cold water. I have a talent for this sort of stunt. It’s a pretty poor experience. So here’s the other thing:
Wool socks keep your feet warm even when they’re wet with icy water.
I’m not too clear on how that works, exactly, but I frankly don’t much care. Also, so help me, wool socks make sandals comfy.
Good winter!
Additional Resources
- For a sock that is both comfortable and sturdy, call upon the good folks at SmartWool. This is expensive clothing, but the things last.
- I’ve heard tell from those I trust that it’s easy to get good at knitting socks. I’m not very good at knitting socks. Yet.
Smartwool socks are the best socks on the planet bar none, don’t even think about other socks.
Really. Just buy them. Better, buy 20.
If you also wear a thin liner sock made of some wicking material, your foot doesn’t get sweaty and doesn’t contact the wool. Which means you can skimp on how many wool socks you own.
DumbWool: “Flash 7 is _required_ to view Smartwool.com.”
Yet another company falls prey to the notion that the web aspires to be a Macromedia Director presentation.
Where else can I buy quality wool socks?
DumbWool: “Flash 7 is _required_ to view Smartwool.com.”
Yet another company falls prey to the notion that the web aspires to be a Macromedia Director presentation.
Where else can I buy quality wool socks?
Wow; that’s an *amazing* website. As in, really shiny and useless.
Any outdoor goods store will sell them (REI for instance, if you require onlineness); also, expensive men’s clothing stores for more stylish options.
My apologies; I think they had a simpler version of the website at one point, but they seem to have broken off all the organ stops now. If you like, they invite interested parties to call for a catalogue: 1-800-550-9665. Not that you’ll ever be able to copy or paste that text from the stupid website. Argh.
Be that said: the lousy web design does not detract from the excellence of the socks.
You can browse and buy the socks at REI too
i’m fairly sure pablo wrote this with smartwool socks in mind~
Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)
Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.
Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.
The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.