When you can buy a good pair socks for $3, it doesn't make economical sense to knit your own at $8-20 a skein. Kilt hose, however, can run you $40-80 on the market, and suddenly it makes a whole hell of a lot more sense to just make your own. And while it can take me the better part of a year to make a damn pair of socks, I will inexplicably turn out hose inside of two weeks. A niche! I have found mine!
There are not a lot of patterns for kilt hose. I bought an old book about knitting kilt hose, and it was full of vague guidelines and uncharted, picture-less directions written in terms nobody uses anymore. I read it anyway, and thinking about making my own collection of kilt hose patterns. Traditional hose! Modern hose! Military hose! Flat knit and fancy and utilitarian hose!
Hose hose hose hose
So I have written the first pattern and made up a pair of simple children's hose.
Children's hose need to be simple, quick enough to knock out before their limbs grow out of them, and durable. The trick is to use slightly thicker yarn on slightly smaller needles, to make a fabric that will hold up a bit and not puddle around the ankles. Here I used a dk weight yarn, worked out a simple cuff that looks fancier than it is, and used single instead of paired decreases to accommodate small sausagey legs.
Around here, the Highland Games come on the heels of Burns' Night, so there is the better part of a year to knit up some nice hose for the kilt season.
And I already need to get cracking on the next pair, because some aspiring RSCDS dance instructor already wore a hole in the ones I made him last year. Since he's bottling a batch of home-brewed hard cider for me this weekend, though, it's a fair trade.
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