Darned Socks

After the success of darning the blue Jitterbug socks I turned my attention to other sock repairs.

I made these pink socks in, oh, 2007 during a Nancy Bush class at . Since it was a one day class we used DK weight yarn in order to have our projects move along quickly and cover the sections we needed to in the allotted time. The problem is, in my opinion, DK weight socks are too thick for wearing with shoes.

Since I didn't want to waste a perfectly good pair of socks I started wearing them around the house as slippers.

Well, that didn't last long. The soft yarn, Zara, wasn't up to that sort of abuse and the heels quickly blew out. At that time I was not motivated enough to learn to darn.

But now that I know it is much less harmless than anticipated I fished these slipper socks out. The irony of repairing them with the same yarn that quickly died is not lost on me.

Of course, after I fixed the heels I was happily wearing them again, only to hook the bottom of the toe of one on the edge of my nightstand and rip open the cute little braid. That is the trailing yarn you see on the right hand sock.

Not even sure where to start with that so I might just pull the ends inside and weave them in.

Ounce of Prevention
With the death and repair of the blue Jitterbug socks I thought it wise to examine my other Jitterbug socks for signs of weakness. The red ones look fine but I found a thin spot on the purple ones.

The weird thing is only one sock has a thin spot. The other sock looks fine. I didn't bother to take pictures because they weren't very exciting.

In this case I took all the pithy sayings about not procrastinating firmly in hand and worked a duplicate stitch darn on the thin spot before it progressed to an actual hole. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on the second sock to see if it thins out too.

A Pound of Cure
Turns out March was a bad place to be a sock in my house.

This is a bad close up of the heel of one of my Joy of Charlene socks. It's upside down, i.e., the cuff is going down my arm and the foot is at the top of the picture.

I took these socks on our trip to Utah. When I put them on something didn't feel right and I looked down to discover this massive blow out. Needless to say I took them back off and didn't wear them.

These socks have a lace and rib pattern and I think the hole started in one of the eyelets which just ran for the hills when it broke free.

The lesson I have learned is not to place eyelets at the top of the heel flap.

Despite the fact that I never use an entire ball of yarn on my socks because I have small feet I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to repair these with the actual yarn. In 2009 I got to clever for my own good and made a pair of socks using leftover yarn from these and the purple Jitterbug socks.

I was sure I'd have to repair them with purple yarn, but then stumbled across a small amount of the Sol Joy in the project bag of another WIP which I'd apparently been using for a provisional cast on.

I worked a traditional darn but it was a little tricky because of the pattern. I wasn't concerned about obscuring the pattern. The issue was a lack of fabric to grab onto because of the eyelets. Also, these socks have a Cuban Heel and I think that unusual shape influcenced things as well.

In the end I got the hole closed up. Three passes seemed enough to close it up.

The second sock of this pair had not yet developed a hole, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry and worked a traditional darn over the area at the top of the heel just to firm things up.

The repairs to the purple and orange socks took around 2 hours. I can safely say that because before I started I put the Simon Pegg movie "Hot Fuzz" into the DVD player for a little background noise.

Still, it was worth it to be able to return these socks to circulation. However, I hope my other socks stay stable for a while. Knitting is much more fun than darning!