Fork Weights
I hope you enjoy my little idea for making these weights.  These evolved because a friend was showing me how to knit double bed socks!  Why knit socks, you say, when they are so cheap to buy?  Well, cheapies are always too short and thin and never last the distance! 

We got to the short rowing needed for the heel and my friend produced the most amazing pair of thin, long bars with a row of quite thick hooks at the top and a hole at the bottom.  These, she informed me, were the Singer Sock Weights.  We continued the lesson and I could see the need for the length and the thinness.  Later, as I tried to do the same thing with my highly-unsuitable regular edge weights, I became green with envy and tried to think of how I could get the Singer weights apart from stealing!  Inspiration came at dinner time and thankfully I had cooked a meal for once that required us to sit down and it wasn’t take-away pizza.  I looked at the fork and thought – ‘how obvious’.  So what follows is how I achieved my Sock Weights and they work very well.

I found two old forks in my kitchen drawer that had a fairly thick handle going all the way up to the tines.  Don’t use any with too thin a handle. 

Using an ordinary, fairly weighty hammer I pounded them completely flat so that they no longer had that arching curve.

Then I laid them at right angles to my husband’s work bench, which thankfully is fairly substantial, (a stone step might also be a good substitute for the bench; a vice would be better). 

As they stood up proud of the top of the bench, I hit them towards the bench, so that the tip only of the tines bent over at a right angle. 
Then I laid them down on the bench with the tips sticking up and carefully hit the tips across a screwdriver so that they bent over and curved to make a hook.

If you can secure them to the bench with a clamp, this is safer. 

Depending on the quality of your fork and the roughness of your hammer, you may need to give the ‘hooks’ a light going over with the sandpaper, as burrs can occur on the metal which will catch on the wool.

Being a little ‘power tool’ challenged I then asked hubby to drill me a central hole at the bottom of the fork (should have seen the look I got) and this is where you need to have picked a fork with a wide end because the hole needs to be big enough to accommodate a hanging weight – I use my ribber weights.  The hole we ended up with, which works really well is 5mm in diameter. 

I was very proud of this achievement and they work very well.  You can pass them up between the two beds quite easily and put whatever weight on them you need.  The story doesn’t end there however. 

Several months later I noticed on E-bay an item called “Sock Weights”.  I opened it out of curiosity and low and below, someone was actually selling weights made out of forks for the Gearhart Sock Machines (these have a fishing sinkers attached to the hole with plastic cable ties and are not flattened). 

I was absolutely astounded, mainly because I thought I’d had an original idea and mainly because someone was making money out of this idea! 
Hope this helps you or at least gives you a chuckle – you may think of some improvements.  By the way, I still haven’t finished the socks!!
Cheers,
Sherrill McKinnon (Ballan)