Theme : Visiting LOHO Sock Tourist Factory (樂活觀光襪廠)
Purpose : Getting to know sock making procedure
Time : January 6, 2015 –2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Location : LOHO Sock Tourist Factory in Shetou town
Members : Yi-Sheng(以勝), Yi-Jia(義家), An-Lun(安倫)、Yun-Zhen(妘蓁)、Yu-Jie(于捷)
Journalists : Yi-Sheng(以勝),Yun-Zhen(妘蓁),Yi-Jia(義家)
Photographers : Yu-Jie(于捷), An-Lun(安倫)

　　Today, we visited the first sock factory established in Shetou town, LOHO Sock Tourist Factory. When we entered the factory, what came into view were many socks and their peripheral products. We were dazzled by different types and colors. As a start, we were taken to watch the video on how the factory made it through the transition.
　　In the video, we saw that they started from scratch, so they strived pretty hard in the initial stage. One day, the boss’s son came up with an idea that they could make the factory a theme tourist factory, but no one thought it was a good idea. But with perseverance, he never gave up and at last, the factory successfully made it through the transition.
　　And then, they showed us the footwear machine of the first generation. We didn’t know footwear machine used to be hand-operated and you could only make three to five dozens of them a day. It was time-consuming. And the second and third generation footwear machines were fairly close in the way they functioned. They were both semiautomatic. The only difference was that you could use the third generation to ink flowers on socks whereas the second generation did not possess the function. After a long time searching for the best, now they used machines made in Italy. On average, it could make a pair of ankle socks within 1.5 minutes, a pair of short socks within 2.5 minutes and long socks in 3.5 minutes. In total, 124 pairs of socks were made per day. The boss even invented an easy-to-open socks packages, so it was more convenient for the customers.
　　At the end of the journey, we were taken to the DIY classroom making adorable socks dolls. The material was the flawed socks. We carefully sew them with needles and we finally made our own guava socks dolls. Although we were not completely content with our dolls, they did look lovely. And at last, we happily brought our own dolls back to school.