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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;bluumz, post: 408765, member: 649&quot;]I&#039;m in the sock-making camp about this photo.</p><p><br /></p><p>The women may be using that tool to &quot;knit&quot; together the heel/toe area of the stocking. Knitted tubes were produced by hand-cranked&nbsp; machines and the heel/toe areas were then joined together by hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>There were small &quot;family knitting machines&quot; available with which people would start their in-home sock-making business. (Or a business owner would provide a family with the machine and pay them to make the goods.) It produced knitted tubes which women and children would then fashion into socks. The tools the women are holding in your photo look like latch hooks. Using a latch hook was one of the methods to make the joins in the toe/heel area. More advanced machines (and presumably, they were more expensive), were able to form the heels/toes. The stockings in your photo look rather crude.</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gfsAAOSwUYNaSqyw/s-l1600.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>A latch hook:</p><p><img src="https://sites.create-cdn.net/siteimages/33/6/8/336800/11/7/8/11781865/500x254.jpg?1458319842" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve found reference stating that as late as WW1, families were given these machines and put to work making socks for the war effort.</p><p><br /></p><p>Editing to add an interesting website with lots of antique sock-making machines for sale: <a href="https://thelegacyfarm.com/Welcome.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://thelegacyfarm.com/Welcome.html" rel="nofollow">https://thelegacyfarm.com/Welcome.html</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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