Niqkita's Sock Journal

EG Smith is one of our original suppliers and still among my personal favorites…
so when I was told Eric was creating a “green line” I was ecstatic. I thought it would just be a handful of environmentally friendly styles like our beloved Two Brothers Organics. Instead it is 40+ items! So I’ve been ordering them in small batches to get us started, beginning with the ones I found most appealing…

These Slinky Knees were most certainly the first one I wanted to try…

But first, just what was recycled and where did it come from?
I asked our rep Frank and he spoke with the resident yarn expert for the company in charge of EG Smith and it turns out that our recycled yarns are actually regenerated yarns. The mill takes the scraps from cotton jersey manufacturers such as HANES, and breaks them down, reweaves them and produces new product, it is recycling waste, but it comes from products never worn and cleans up the end result of “scraps” which in the old days would have made the rag bag or the dump. Also on the information highway, the uncertified cotton they are using as blends in the ECO socks comes from Poland and China and is reported to be Organic (they are working on Certification), which gives us an even better Green Product. They are also starting to blend in ECOFIL yarns (plastic water bottles recycled into polyester fill yarns). So they are recycled, regenerated, and still PURE enough to satisfy even the most ardent organic mavens.
So there you have it, the official explanation of the origins of our lovely new socks. More of these will be added this week, and over the coming weeks and months…
They are all pretty awesome!

Made in the USA, to our specifications…

Traditionally a men’s sock garter, we think they are equally practical for girls…

downright sexy on ladies…

…and just plain fun!

They haven’t been the easiest item to find…
at long last we have secured a source for classic sock garters!
with stripes & without stripes
Thanks to my determined crew we’ve received, tested, photographed & labeled a slew of these for you and will be adding variations in the future (more colors and hardware options including clips and faux-leather!!!).

We even made one a few inches longer in case you have extra large calves or want to wear them at your thighs…

Lots more Dreamy news to come!

This isn’t even all of it…

We have among our latest arrivals being tested & shot this week:
E.G. Smith Eco line of Green Socks
…made of recycled & organic yarns
Strange Monster Arm Cozies
…snug and oh-so-lovely!
K. Bell’s Soft & Dreamy socks
…with a name like that we better be selling them!
but do they live up to it? yeah, they’re pretty scrumptious.
These will start showing up on the site Monday…

and what you don’t see above are…
Classic Men’s Sock Garters

and an in-store exclusive of Betsey Johnson:

Don’t worry though, we’ll definitely offer our favorites online soon too!
But in store exclusives aren’t a bad idea either…

and so is a chill, with Fall near, tights weather is here!!!
We just restocked the EG Smith tights with the three missing colors due back soon. The quality of these tights seems better than ever this year as a new company has taken responsibility for their production and is also working with Eric (the E in EG Smith) on an exciting new line of green socks, not green like my new pair of chartreuse tights seen here, but green as in organically grown cotton dyed with natural dyes all made here in the US for what just might be the earth-friendliest socks ever! They should arrive by spring so stay tuned for that ~:) but for now, back to tights… EG Smith Bigger Better tights were not on the order list for awhile and that really upset us! sure these original “Leg Therapy” tights are supposed to fit up to 6 feet tall and 200 lbs, but not all proportions are comfortable in them and prefer the BBs. Better news? I’m asking them to make more colors in bigger better, including space dyed and heathers, and while we’re asking for stuff, how about some bigger better leggings? if you’ve tried to find genuine plus sized leggings you know there is room for improvement here. So here’s to dreaming up more ways to stay warm in the cooler months! Great for women and men alike, totally opaque with a nice roomy double-seamed rear and a few fresh images of the same old classic colors.

This is the latest addition to our new organic sock collection and might just be my favorite so far. They are called Nuby Organic socks and are very much like the EG Smith GoGo bootsocks, but a bit softer right out of the box and the feet feel more cushiony, plus, they are $2 less! One of the many cool things about the 2 Brothers Organic socks is that the organic cotton is actually grown right here in the US, down by Texas. The only little flaw I found with this style is that the dye near the toes of the navy pair I tried was not as dark as the rest of the sock. I didn’t see that in any of the other pairs so it is most likely my usual weird luck of getting the wonky pair (this is a phenomenon that has followed me since my days of working at Trader Joe’s and sampling new foods, I always seemed to get the bug ~:P ) The feet on many of the other 2 Bothers Organic socks run small, but these seemed pretty normal fitting a women’s US shoe size 9 fine, beyond that the heels may fall short, but at least they are not freakishly small. For a nice simple summer sock I think these are really great!

Also high on my original list of socks I dreamed of selling: hemp socks…
The 2 Brothers Hemp Crew is our third, and quite possibly my favorite hemp sock yet; like the other organics it also comes in two sizes. The EG Smith version was nice, but has not been available to us since last year.
Hemp is known for being easy to grow without the help of fertilizers and insecticides and the fiber is perfect for all kinds of things from paper to clothing and much much more. Unfortunately hemp has a bad reputation from a shady past and we’re not allowed to grow it here in the USA, not even for its fiber or pulp that could save forests full of trees. Hopefully that will change someday, but for now the hemp yarn is imported and mixed with cotton to make a soft absorbent sock that will keep your feet cooler than cotton alone. I thought I had more to say about this, but now I don’t remember what it was ~;)
We’ll be adding even more organic styles in the months to come!

With these we see the biggest fault I’ve found in the new organics, they run a bit small. The quarter crew above looks like a child’s sock all wrapped in its 100% recycled package. Surely they must stretch a lot I thought as I unwrapped them. Sure enough they stretched right onto my size 8.5 feet & sure enough it wasn’t long til they were half-way off my feet. I think they’ll be great for petite feet, kids maybe? And then there were these:

Meant to be a men’s sock, they fit so well and looked so great I could barely hand them over to be tested by my fav men’s sock tester. They did fit him, just not as well as they fit me and I’ve yet to take pictures of them on him so I’ve not yet added them to the men’s section. For some reason people are sometimes weird about buying socks for men that are shown on a woman. These are an ultimate boyfriends sock if ever there was one! They have a terry looping on the insides of the feet and I feared that would make my Mary Jane’s too snug, but the gentle padding actually made them more comfortable, now I just need to prove that men can actually wear them too ~;)

Organic socks were one of the ideas I put on my very first list of socks I wanted to sell. But getting them wasn’t as easy as it seemed since not many companies sold them back then and I was a new unknown with a funny business name. Every so often I looked into it and would give up each time I didn’t find a new lead. But, recently one of our main reps showed me a new line they’d taken on: organic US grown & made cotton socks! So I picked out a few to start with, if they’re popular we’ll get more. They come in both men’s & women’s sizes so we’ve been testing them out the past couple of weeks (of course you don’t have to be a guy to wear the larger size).
These are called Organic Dress socks, but we thought they made great casual socks too. Besides wearing them to work & around the house we wore them for walks & playing at the park with Lola and, of course, I gave them a good sleeping test too, they stayed on all night and didn’t over heat my feet. Of the four I’ll be showing you this week these are my fav’s for their variety (four colors in two sizes) and their flexibility (scrunch em, cuff em, wear em tall, well, to the tops of your calves anyway).