I refuse to believe dryers and washing machines eat socks.

[Maryn]

At our house, the lost socks are routinely hiding out in a larger, seldom-used item that was in the same load in the dryer. My laundry laughs at fabric softener and dryer sheets, enormously proud of its ability to enact static cling.

When I got out the red tablecloth for Christmas, it had a sock in its folds, missing since last winter. Likewise, the flannel sheets have a surprise sock every year.

How to remove grease spots:

1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. blue Dawn dishwashing liquid
1/2 tsp. hydrogen peroxide

Mix together and apply to stains. Allow to sit for about two hours. Launder as usual. Works for about 75% of all stains, including those set in, gone through the dryer, and/or years old. A second use on dark colors may cause slight fading--but is that worse than a dark grease stain?

Maryn, channeling Sue Ann Nivens

 

[Introversion]

I vaguely recall reading a short story decades ago, that went something like:

• protagonist’s friend starts talking about everyday items like paperclips & socks actually being alien lifeforms just pretending to be everyday items, and how sometimes they “go home” and you’re down a sock, and sometimes they multiply and you get extra socks
• protagonist worries for friend’s sanity, urges him to see a doctor
• protagonist later calls friend, asking him to come to his apartment, claiming to have incontrovertible proof
• protagonist finds friend dead, with a wire clothes hangar wrapped tightly around his neck

So, be careful out there! The socks & clothes hangars are watching…

 

[AnneMarble]

My father was once walking down the city sidewalk during his lunch hour when he felt something ... odd. Moving down his pants leg. He checked, and .. it was a runaway sock!

So sometimes the socks hide in your pant legs because they want to escape to the city streets. It's your job to find them before they end up smoking in an alleyway.

 

[SWest]

...a cockatiel isn't capable of stealing socks.

...

Or is it...

 

[Maggie Maxwell]

My father was once walking down the city sidewalk during his lunch hour when he felt something ... odd. Moving down his pants leg. He checked, and .. it was a runaway sock!

So sometimes the socks hide in your pant legs because they want to escape to the city streets. It's your job to find them before they end up smoking in an alleyway.

Early in the pandemic when we only had four cloth masks, one of them went missing after a single use. "Gosh darn it," we said. "It's not in the car, not in the laundry basket, not left in the washer or dryer. I guess it must've fallen out somewhere. How careless of us."

And then we changed our pillowcases.

 

[mrsmig]

Jerry Seinfeld has a theory:

 

[CandyFloss]

I think I solved this problem! They're hidden in the corners of duvets and pillowcases! Once I found a t-shirt lurking in the corner of my duvet cover and I hadn't noticed it for days :}

 

[Holly Green]

After some reflection, I find myself pondering if perhaps it was wrong of me to implicate the leprechauns.

Taking into consideration the Law of Parsimony, maybe with all that spinning, missing socks just get unspun, becoming loose threads formerly known as foot coverings.

The question is, instead of spinning a yarn, can all ye writers also spin a sock out of the loose threads you find on your t-shirts and in your pillowcases? (And clogging the plughole.) Can you reconstruct the deconstructed metatarsal warmers? Would you want to--or is it best to spin not the unspun?

I'm tempted to say yes to the last question. The loose threads creating a new home for themselves down the drain would, IMO, need to be washed first, before spinning. I feel a conundrum coming on...

I also take responsibility for the part I have played in making this a loose thread...

(NB: I stand by my original assertion re the origin of the oil stained t-shirts though. That's definitely the little bearded fellows.)

 

[Unimportant]

After some reflection, I find myself pondering if perhaps it was wrong of me to implicate the leprechauns.

Coming from someone with "green" in their name, I would have thought you'd be more sensitive to implicating people of colour

 

[Silenia]

can all ye writers also spin a sock out of the loose threads you find on your t-shirts and in your pillowcases?

The loose threads on my socks and pillowcases, no. The loose threads of plot and plot twists I've failed to properly tie off, on the other hand...

 

[Maryn]

As a long-haired person, you all are completely neglecting the weaving and felting possibilities of hair wads in either the washer or the dryer. When I had two long-haired kids using the same facilities, we could easily have knit kneesocks or made our own brown cat.