The solution to odd socks

I had made the decision that I would find the solution to odd socks (see All About Me blog).

The conversation moved from moaning about odd socks to bouncing around ideas about how socks could be paired, and more importantly stay paired:

Velcro would help the socks stick together .....as well as to everything else! 

Magnets were suggested but the thought of opening the washer to find all your socks stuck to the drum wasn't appealing nor was the possibility of setting of security alarms at airports and shops.

Ribbons to tie the socks together would look pretty but it's bad enough when you're running late in the morning trying to find the missing sock. Prising apart a double knot would be even worse.

Who remembers having their mittens on a length of string running across the back of their school coat and through the arms? Could the same be possible for socks?

Poppers seemed like the sensible solution so I set about ordering different sizes and styles of poppers to see if they would be strong enough to keep socks paired at 800 rpm.

The initial design was to have a popper on each sock. What's better than one popper.....two! If they are secure with one, two would make them doubly secure. 

I asked some friends what they thought about socks that will stay paired with poppers. I had the doubters, you'll always get some resistant to change, especially for an item like a sock which hasn't been altered or improved in our lifetime. Others thought it was fab but worried about the poppers digging in to the ankle or being seen. This was the feedback I needed to keep working on my design; 2 poppers that attached the socks without being felt or seen.

So that's how the tape fastening came about. This had another advantage; socks as it turns out are pretty complex, being knitted from a continuous yarn. Punching a popper directly to the sock can break the yarn, compromising the integrity of the knit, just like getting a hole in a jumper an seeing it unravel.

So I had the design, I had made a few dodgy attempts at a prototype ( I favoured woodwork over home economics at GCSE). But how would I go about getting them made professionally? This proved to be the hardest step so will leave for another blog. For now I had an turned the idea to a design, it was beginning to get real.