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We try to select artworks from all major art periods. Of course, we have to consider whether we can actually acquire the rights to the respective artworks.

Furthermore, a work of art must also be feasible. We work with very high-quality machines that can knit up to 17 colors in a row, but if the number of colors exceeds that, then we sometimes have to say that a work of art cannot be realized as a knitted version.

Our socks are knitted, not printed. That's a crucial difference.

When printing, the sock can be printed flat, i.e., front and back, but then there's the problem of a strip along the sides where no ink has been applied. These two strips are then visible as vertical white lines when the sock is worn.

Alternatively, you can pull a sock onto one leg and print all the way around. This is significantly more expensive, but then the white stripes are eliminated. However, with both methods, the color intensity is drastically reduced during printing, and the underlying material becomes visible. Furthermore, the design becomes severely distorted with this technique.

One could slightly stretch the sock and then print on it, but this would have the disadvantage that the design wouldn't look so nice in the store because a certain amount of stretching had been anticipated, while the sock would look quite strange in its unstretched state on the sales shelf.

Our socks are knitted on single-cylinder machines, usually with an extremely high needle count of 200 needles. That's the number of needles attached to the knitting cylinder.

The differently colored threads run into these knitting cylinders. When the machine reaches a point where it needs to knit a white eye, it picks up the white thread, knits one or two stitches, releases the thread, and picks up the next thread. Another special feature of our machines is that we can process up to 17 colors in a single horizontal row.

Theoretically, the inside of such a sock would look like a sweater knitted using the Jacquard technique. However, the sock wouldn't be stretchy. A sweater doesn't need to be stretchy because it's meant to fit loosely, whereas a sock needs to fit snugly and comfortably. The problem with socks is that the foot is wider at the front than in the lower leg area, right above the heel. That's where the leg is thinnest, and that's where the sock needs to fit. But the foot has to fit inside the sock, so the sock needs to be stretchy.

A sock can only be stretchy if the material it's made of is stretchy. That's why the base of these socks is always made of polyamide with a percentage of elastane. These socks simply cannot be made without this elastane.

At MuseARTa, we now want to produce socks with a very high cotton content, and cotton isn't stretchy. Anyone who owns jeans without elastane knows this. Therefore, these non-elastic cotton threads on the inside of the sock must be cut during knitting so they can move within the knit fabric – that's what the material is called. The thread is cut, and this allows the sock to stretch. However, to prevent the thread from slipping out of the individual stitches when stretched, it must be cut in such a way that it remains inside the sock even when stretched and doesn't slip out the outside. This is only possible if the thread is of a certain length.

These threads, which run along the inside and are invisible until the machine knits them, and only become visible when the machine needs that specific thread in that particular color, are called float threads. If a machine knits one color for a few stitches, then another color for a very small number of stitches, and then returns to the first color, the length of the float thread flowing on the inside might not be long enough for the machine's automatic cutter to engage and cut the thread. Depending on the machine type, it needs between 10 and 12 stitches to be able to cut the thread. If there are fewer stitches, the thread remains on the inside and continues to flow.

If a design has extremely frequent color changes and the float threads are always very short, the machine cannot even start to cut; in such a case, the sock would not be stretchy and you wouldn't be able to get your foot in.

For very complex designs, we try to work around them by turning the socks inside out and manually cutting any threads that can't be automatically cut by the machine. This works with a float length of about eight stitches, but not with too few stitches, because then the thread flies out the front and it wouldn't look nice.

In short: it is a highly complex topic; we use strain gauges to check how elastic a sock is at each point and we really put a lot of effort into the production of our socks.

By the way: with double-cylinder machines, the threads can run inside and aren't cut off. However, this type of machine can't process as many colors as we do, nor can it produce socks in a size range of 36 to 40 or 40 to 46. Double-cylinder socks can only really be made in double sizes. Double-cylinder machines are completely unsuitable for this type of patterned socks.

The loose threads hanging inside are therefore not proof of inferior quality, as is often mistakenly claimed on the internet, but a necessity and contribute to the better wearing comfort of the socks.

We produce at different locations because no single location could supply what we need. For some designs, we require an extremely high number of colors in a single sequence; these machines run slower because the machine has to decelerate with each color change so the cylinder can then rotate faster again. The more frequent the color changes and the more colors used, the lower the production output of a machine. Sometimes we can only produce 2-3 pairs per hour on a single machine.

Other machines can produce fewer colors and are therefore more efficient. Only through a mix of pricing factors are we even able to offer these highly complex socks at this price, because we also pay licensing fees for the image usage rights.

Furthermore, it often comes down to yarn availability. Having yarns in many colors in stock costs more. Having yarns dyed on demand is cheaper for larger production volumes, but it makes you less flexible and you have to be able to handle the larger quantities.

Furthermore, the design we use also depends on the motif. Since a stitch isn't square, different machines knit a different number of rows for the same leg length. For us, this varies between 220 and 260 rows per leg length.

If a design is particularly tall and very detailed, it makes sense to go to a manufacturer where the stitches are not quite so tall, and therefore more knitted rows fit into the shaft length we specify, allowing us to work with greater detail.