It's a shocking and graphic image, and I apologize for any discomfort it may cause you. But we all have to face the fact that it could happen eventually to any one of us.
Holes!
Holes in our hand knit socks! aaaaahhhhh!
As you can see they are in the back of the leg, just above the start of the heel flap. It strikes me as a strange place to get holes in your socks.
Yesterday I wore these socks in my big Sorrel snow boots when I walked to the library for the Friday knitting group.
No one else was there, by the way, probably because of the horrible weather. Of course two out of the three librarians knit, so they stopped by and chatted. The library in general was pretty deserted, which made it really, really quiet, even for a library. I'm not accustomed to knitting in such silence. At home I knit while watching TV. If I'm knitting out and about I'm usually with other knitters.
Every Sock Matters
Anyway, back to my poor socks.
When I discovered the tragedy at then end of the evening I showed them to Hubby while making little whimpering noises and blamed my boots.
He said he thought the yarn was just worn away and the boots were probably the final blow. Then it's possible he said something exceedingly absurd along the lines of "You have other pairs."
Yes, and you have a lot of bottles of wine, but it's not like you wouldn't be upset if one fell and broke. Of course, since I was grieving last night his ridiculous comment didn't really register.
A Good Run
Hubby's comment about the fabric simply being worn away made me wonder just how old these socks are. Happily, I was able to look them up in my Ravelry notebook.
According to my notes I made them in 2007. It must have been early 2007 because they appear to predate both my Ravelry account (Dec 2007) and my blog (Sept 2007).
I seem to remember having entered all my pre-Ravelry socks into my notebook at one point so I could track the colors.
Anyway. That means the socks are about four years old, which is a pretty good run, I suppose.
On the other hand, my first socks, which I made using Regia, still seem to be going strong. And they are from around 2003. I guess that bit of nylon really does make a difference in durability.
Darn It?
I'm in a quandary about how to proceed with the poor blue Jitterbug socks.
If they were store bought socks I'd throw them away without a second thought.
However, despite owning 23 other pairs of hand knit socks and Hubby's implied suggestion to the contrary, I can't dispose of a pair of hand knit socks!
At the deepest part it looks like I've lost 5 or 6 stitches and about 6 rows.
Part of me says this might be a good opportunity to learn to darn. Although the need to build a little grid to work over sounds like a pain.
Part of me says to snip the yarn below the hole, cut out the bad parts, and reknit the leg up. It might end up a wee bit shorter but that shouldn't be a problem. However, I'm not sure about the integrity of the heel flap, so I might fix the leg to only end up with a hole in the heel flap down the road.
What I can't do is open the toe, frog them entirely, and reknit them. The soles are just a wee bit felted so I know they wouldn't frog. No, any repairs will have to take place above the gusset.
Wish me luck.
Good luck! I wouldn't toss them out either. Too pretty!
ReplyDeleteOhhhh nooooo! That's the worst. My sister wears through her handknit socks like nobody's business and insists that I patch them and she just goes right on wearing them after I fix them. I suppose it's my own fault for getting her addicted to handknit socks in the first place!
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