Why it is on The Drew
The Drew is the first sock we made, named for Drew, who was at home on the water. The wave breaks out of the cuff. On the back of the ankle we knit the reference to Matthew 4:18–20 — the citation, not the verse — in a typewriter face, where a brand name would usually go.
“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.”
— Matthew 4:19–20 (KJV)
Two brothers, already at work
The two men on that shore were brothers. Simon and Andrew were called in the same moment, and the first thing Matthew tells us about them is not their faith but their occupation: “casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.” They were not seekers who happened to be standing near the water. They were working men in the middle of a working day.
That changes how the call reads. Jesus does not ask them to become something unrelated to who they already are. He takes the trade they have and turns it: you know how to work a net, now work for men. And the promise is future tense — I will make you. They were not finished when they followed. That is the part we keep coming back to.
One detail, honestly held
In verse 18, the word for the net they are casting is amphiblestron, a throw-net flung in a circle around the catch by one man working the shallows. In verse 20, the nets they leave behind are diktya, the ordinary and more common word. Some readers take the shift as deliberate: the particular tool set down for a general life. It may just as easily be Matthew varying his vocabulary. We do not think the sock depends on settling it, and we would rather say so than build a point on a word we cannot prove.
Why the reference and not the verse
A sock is not a tract. Printing a full verse down the leg makes the wearer into a billboard, and that is not the thing we set out to make. A citation does different work. It is legible to someone who already knows the passage, and it is an open question to someone who does not — four characters and two numbers that invite the ask instead of answering it in advance.
It is also more durable. The reference is knit into the sock rather than printed on top of it, so it does not crack, peel or wash pale over the life of the pair. The verse outlasts the ink it would have been printed in, which seems like the right way around.
Scripture from the King James Version (public domain).