I’m getting ready to go out and I just put on two knee-highs of different colors and I don’t even care. But it made me remember back to a time when knee highs were something new and they were more stockingish and less disposable. I read somewhere – Hints From Heloise* or a fashion advice column in Seventeen magazine – that if you had a bunch of mismatched knee-highs you could boil them together and they’d all come out the same color. I did that at least once . I don’t remember if this technique actually worked but I do remember that one knee high touched the dry rim of the metal sauce pan and burned up. These days I do my best to select two of the same brand and color from the snake’s nest that all my knee highs have gathered themselves into, but if I can’t do that or if I’m in a mood where that’s too much effort, I just go with whatever two I come across first.
*I was never much of a Heloise fan but I went along with it just so I could stay on top if the pop culture homemaking tips of the day, (even though I was a teenager) (I think I was a teen ager). But then when I found out that she had two dogs named Zinfandel and Sauvignon, I had to ditch her because that was far too twee to be tolerated.
Cripes Suzette 
My sister and I always called her Hell-o-wheeze, she was so annoying. My mom swore by her hints though. Sort of proto Pinterest.
I am very weary of those knee highs…I once worked with a girl that wore them with a skirt that had a huge slit in the back..I assume that she thought we could not see them….Scarred for Life.
Wait, the knee-highs are a McGuffin – the real story is the faddish pants the model is wearing. Gaucho?
Where’s the comment on those?
[…] I’ve gone out more than once with mismatched socks, which of course was utterly mortifying once I found out. (Never tell me my socks don’t match. You will plunge me into the Slough of Despond.) What I need is this level of indifference: […]
Back in the First Ice Age when I managed the hosiery department at our local I. Magnin, (full of such antiquitities as sexy sheer gawdawful expensive hosiery with seams and cloques on the sides) I used to wonder about the grannies who came in to buy hosiery with cotton soles. As someone who can no longer handle the misery of nylon stockings, I understand. Boy, do I understand. But I do have a plastic shoebox full of snarled mismatched black kneehighs for those times when a bare foot would mightily offend.
Question: Why do the cleverly carded multiple pairs of black kneehighs always include an assortment of patterns and thicknesses? Why not four or six alike? Comes a Revolution…
I’ve asked that exact same question many times. Sometimes in a whiney tone.
Oh lawdy, I thought for sure you were going to write, “. . . that if you had a bunch of mismatched knee-highs you could boil them together and use them as turkey stuffing to round out your holiday feast.” I get to thinking other people think like I do and that’s what happens. I did work in “hair knob” in a post though and I forgot to credit you. EVERYONE, LISTEN UP, HAIR KNOB IS THE GREATEST FUN PHRASE EVER AND SUZETTE INVENTED IT WHEN WRITING THAT TIME ABOUT OUR BELOVED FIRST LAY-DEY. Sorry, S, srsly.
[…] Come to think of it, I had another bad experience with one of her hints. So in conclusion: what a crock of shit. To this very day, I remain […]