Darning Socks

Dear users, dear authors,
how do you deal with holes in your socks?

Well, with my husband, the holes are usually so big and the socks get worn out so quickly that I don’t even bother darning them anymore. It’s more fun to knit new socks anyway.

Strangely enough, I haven’t had to darn a single pair of my own socks yet. At some point, they just aren’t quite as soft and nice anymore. Then they end up in the car as “emergency socks” or something like that… And I look forward to NEW ones :-))))

Oh my gosh, darning socks with my mom’s darning mushroom—I hated that. I could never get it to look as even as my grandma did. These days, you can afford to just throw them away and buy new ones.

We learned to darn socks in school using stockings that we’d painstakingly knitted ourselves and then had to cut open! These days, I only darn socks very, very rarely—it doesn’t really work with store-bought ones anyway!

I learned how to darn in school. But we only practiced on pieces of cardboard covered with wool. I even got an “A” for it. Man, was I proud!
When I started knitting socks, my daughter was the first to get them. Her feet were always freezing when she went to the wholesale market to buy flowers. So the socks were in high demand because they were nice and warm.
I darned that very first pair several times. Eventually, of course, it just wasn’t possible anymore. So I simply cut off the foot section. I’ll never forget the horrified look on my daughter’s face—she was 20 at the time. With tears in her eyes, all she could
say was, “My socks…” It didn’t comfort her at all that I’d knitted a new foot section onto them.

She never developed such a “close bond” with any of the other socks I made. Those first socks were probably something truly special to her.

I still mend most of the knitted socks I make today. With store-bought ones, it’s usually not worth the effort.

I know how to do it, but I actually never do it. I’d rather knit a new pair :-)