Thanks for HMS Defiant for this reference about Romano-Egyptian socks. He watches me knitting and sent this delightful story along.
I am a sock knitter and one of the nice things about knitting your own is that you can tailor them to the recipient – color, length in all dimensions, weight.
However, I have never had to adjust my knitting to accommodate the apparently stork-footed (see there are storks again) individual for whom these socks were made.
Another note is that the story talks about single-needle knitting. I always thought that was crochet – ?
Gunsmoke and Knitting 