What MediPeds makes, and who it is for

MediPeds knits socks for feet that have a reason to be careful, and has done since 2004. Five shelves: the non-binding crew socks, the same knit cut to the quarter height, the extra wide socks, the over-the-calf mild compression, and the lines chosen for their yarn rather than their height. What holds them together is not a look but a decision made at the top of the sock: the rubber thread that holds an ordinary sock up is not in these.

The ring above the ankle

Take an ordinary sock off in the evening and there is often a mark pressed into the skin above the ankle. That mark is elastic doing exactly what it was put there to do, and for most people it is nothing. For a leg that swells through the afternoon it is the difference between a sock that fitted at nine and one that has been squeezing since lunchtime, and for a foot that has lost some feeling it is a pressure nobody is reporting back. The whole of this range starts there. The cuff is knitted from the same yarn as the leg with extra stretch worked into it, so it sits rather than grips.

The trade is real and we would rather print it than have you find it out. A cuff that does not grip can slide, and on a smooth calf it sometimes will. The padded sole is a large part of the answer: the extra loops under the foot add enough friction inside a shoe to keep the foot end still, which is why nearly every non-binding sock here is also a cushioned one. The two plain-knit exceptions are on the shelves where a thinner sock is the point.

What we make

The crew and the quarter are the same sock at two heights, and between them they are most of the catalogue: a non-binding top, a flat toe seam, a padded sole and heel, in white, black and a two-tone where the grey marks where the cushion runs. Four pairs to a packet or eight, in shoe-size ranges from men 6-9 with women 7-10 up to men 12-15. The extra wide shelf is the same sock knitted on a wider last, with more yarn round the cuff and more give in it, for the morning when a sock goes on over the toes and then stops.

The over-the-calf socks are the firmest knit here, coming up under the knee in black. The last shelf is the one chosen by yarn: NanoGLIDE, knitted to slide against itself rather than against skin, which is what friction and a blister are; Coolmax and Sorbtek, which move damp off the foot instead of holding it, one as a cushioned everyday crew and one as a dress crew thin enough to go under a work shoe; a memory cushion crew that is the thickest sock in the range; and a sport-cut liner that finishes below the shoe line.

Who it is for

You, if a sock has become something you think about. Or the person you are buying for, which on this catalogue is at least as often the case: a parent whose ankles mark, a father who will not mention that his boots blister, someone whose feet a nurse asked about. That shapes the pages more than any style decision does. The shoe-size range and the pack count are at the top of a card, the height is drawn rather than described, and the honest disadvantage of each knit is printed where a shop would normally print an adjective.

What we will and will not say

A card describes a sock: how it is knitted, where it stops, what shoe sizes it is cut for, how many pairs come in the packet and what it costs. What a sock will do for a particular foot is not something a catalogue can know, and this one leaves that question where it belongs. Claims about circulation, swelling, sores and clots are matters for a clinician, and the one photograph in this range that prints them on a packet stays out of the catalogue for the same reason. Where a page has to explain what a non-binding top is for, it points at the people whose job that is: the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases on what a sock for a numb foot should be like, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on checking a foot daily, the American Podiatric Medical Association on why footwear choice matters, and MedlinePlus on what a prescribed compression stocking actually is.

The one checkable thing we state about ourselves is the year, 2004. Everything else worth knowing about a sock is on its card, and how the figures on those cards are kept current is set out on how we update the catalogue.