HERE is a story from the days when love meant a clean, warm pair of knitted socks.

Nobody knows how many grey wool socks Australian women knitted for the boys at the front during World War 1, but volunteer Janet Burningham of Heathcote can tell you exactly how long it takes to knit a pair.

Using a rare and annotated grey sock pattern, it took two weeks (squeezed in while catching the train or watching television) and about $20 worth of Patons' 8-ply grey wool for Ms Burningham to reproduce the seamless socks. (Each sock would take about a day to knit without life interfering.)

Ms Burningham, a member of knitting group Wrap with Love, used a pattern that belonged to Irene Read, a keen knitter for the war effort nearly 100 years ago. About the size of today's iPhone, ''The Grey Sock'' kit is small enough to slip into a woman's handbag. Its instructions were meant to be followed exactly to ensure the woollen hosiery was comfortable and warm.

Two copies of the pattern, one with handwritten reminders presumably learnt over repeated knittings, were found in a bequest to the State Library of NSW by descendants of Mrs Read, who accompanied her husband to Egypt in 1915 where Dr Read cared for the first Anzacs wounded at Gallipoli.

According to the library's war specialist, Elise Edmonds, the grey sock is a symbol of how women on the home front contributed to the war effort. ''The First World War activated knitting needles across the country as women and girls mobilised their skills to support soldiers overseas,'' she said.

In much the same way as today's Wrap with Love volunteers meet to knit woollen blankets to send overseas, women during WWI would meet to knit socks for the troops overseas.

The troops never had enough socks because the wool rotted in the wet, muddy trenches. When socks went bad, so did feet, causing trench foot, which caused feet to swell, smell and rot. Corporal Archie A.Barwick wrote in the trenches of Ypres, Belgium, that he had not ''been dry since leaving Fricourt Camp some time ago'' and his feet ''suffered so''.

Some days later, his platoon of 30 to 60 men received 14 pairs of clean socks, which were ''not enough but better than none at all''.

While today's knitting patterns are the size of an A4 sheet and leave little to the imagination, Ms Burningham said the original pattern was a little hard to read because it was so small.

Once she got going, it was easy for Ms Burningham, an experienced sock knitter who recalls her mother knitting socks for the World War II effort. By the time Ms Burningham had turned 12, her mother had given her the ''tedious'' task of knitting socks for her father.

''He was an army person, and he used to wear long stockings. And it is a long way down from the knee to the heel when you are knitting. [There's] no interest at all,'' she said.

One of the few small comforts for a digger in unfamiliar territory during the First World War was to receive a pair of hand-knitted socks from a stranger back home.

It meant he was not forgotten.

But how much better if the socks turned out to contain a brief but touching message of support. Even young boys were prepared to pick up the knitting needles in support of the war effort.

"Knitted by Joe Barlow aged 11 Glenvale Park Victoria God bless you soldier boy," one message said.

'Wishing you all a quick victory and a speedy return," wrote Bill O'Brien from the Shand Hotel in Newport, Victoria.

Maurice John "Jack" Pickrell was the recipient of these and more notes which go on show  on Tuesday, along with his other papers, at the Amaze Gallery at the State Library of NSW. An image of Pickrell  also features in the Remember Me: the Lost Diggers of Vignacourt exhibition, which is also being held at the State Library.

The library believes that there are many similar notes lying undiscovered.

Pickrell also received notes from a Maud Schafer from Willaura, Victoria, and a Miss Dorothy Smith from Cudal, NSW.  

It is believed more than 1 million pairs of socks were knitted by Australian women and children during the war. The Australian Comforts Fund co-ordinated knitting circles and the delivery of much needed socks to the troops. Predominantly run by women, the fund provided and distributed free "comforts" to the Australian troops including tobacco, chocolate, newspapers and cakes.

Pickrell was born in Sussex, England, in 1894 and arrived in Australia about 1910, aged 16. In 1914, he was employed as a driver for a doctor in Glen Innes and enjoyed some success as a golfer. He drove a horse and buggy for the doctor and transported him on all his house calls.

While in Brisbane visiting an aunt, he walked into a recruitment office on September 18, 1914, and walked out an enlisted soldier in the A.I.F. at the age of 20. It would be more than four years before he returned to Glen Innes and met, at the golf club, the woman he would marry.

His skills as a driver came in useful as a deliverer of essential stores to the troops in Egypt, Gallipoli  and northern France.

Serving in the 4th Divisional Transport, he told a story of horses and men bathing in the ocean prior to Gallipoli. He also recalled holding the horses and trying to keep them calm in northern France during shelling.

His son, Tony Pickrell, 77, who lives in North Rocks, said he believed the socks would have been well received on the Western Front with harsh winter conditions.

"I think to get a pair of socks they would have been only too happy. I have his diary and he apparently was a good letter writer. Every third day or so he seemed to be sending a postcard off to someone or other," he said.

"When he was on leave, he took the trouble to write back to the girls. I didn't get this stuff and papers until 1998. By then, these people would be gone. Had I known about them earlier, I might have tried to contact them."

Driver Pickrell died at the age of 75.