In a workshop that’s a refuge from the world, Dorothea Campbell uses her hands. Her right hand turns a crank, or manipulates dozens of needles arranged in a circle. With her left, she holds tightly to ...

Sock machines have a metal tube in the middle with dozens of needles that act like robotic claws, grabbing pieces of thread and knitting them. Every few minutes, each machine spurts out what's called ...

The cover article of this month's issue of The Atlantic magazine has me thinking about socks -- or rather, about what Abraham Lincoln said about them. The article, titled "The 50 Greatest ...

While I was doing research for my book, Wartime: The First World War in a Canadian Town (which features Guelph), I came across the story of how women across Canada knitted various items for the ...

This story is part of a Streetwise series on “How It’s Made” in Sheboygan. The series will help give a behind-the-scenes look at how businesses and crafters across Sheboygan County make the goods you ...

“I‘m really crazy about foot care,” Conrad Anker, the mountaineer, says. “If your feet aren’t working, nothing is working.” He takes off his shoe and removes a sock and hands it to me in the backseat ...

Terry Locklear (left), Gina Locklear, and Regina Locklear of Emi-G. Emi-G Knitting’s Fort Payne, Alabama factory–which now produces basic Emi-G socks, along with Zkanos (pictured on Gina) and Little ...

This is the first of a two-part report. Fort Payne is filled with people who built entire lives around the sock mills. In a town of 13,000 people, there were more than 8,000 sock mill jobs just a few ...