Darning socks fever (2023, April and May)

maipenquynh on 25. August 2024

There are a lot of socks coming up in this post. While editing the photos, I realized how many photos of socks - both good and bad - will be in this post. Sock content FTW 🧦

In April and May 2023, I was in darning socks fever. There was a reason that it was just socks and nothing else. I was literally obsessed with the duplicate stitch. The duplicate stitch is based on knitted stitches. And socks were pretty much the only items of clothing in my surrounding that were knitted AND worth repairing .

This darning fever took me by surprise; from a technical perspective, I wasn't prepared at all. I was visiting my parents without any darning equipment. And you must know, darning equipment hardly takes up any space (it's just a needle, yarn and a darning egg). Thus, the fact that I didn't take this minimal kit with me is proof that I wasn't planning on darning!

One day, at lunchtime I noticed that my sock was getting thin in one of the typical places, the ball of the foot. BAM! The desire to darn this spot came instantly. And so I set off in search of materials. I found a needle and thread in the sewing box. I used an empty toilet roll as a base and replacement for a darning egg. So I was equipped and started. I sat down on the stairs where the light was good and darned and darned. My parents observed me and commented on my activities in two directions: On the one hand, they made fun of me for doing this work; on the other hand, they also found it impressive that I actually made the effort.

On another day, I met up with a friend to go to the cinema. We still had some time so we went to the Augsburger Dult (*) to stroll around a bit. This was the place where I bought darning thread ‘from the trades’ for the first time - for 50 cents! That was a bit of an experience for me as I had only bought things second-hand until then. Don't ask me why this is such an event but it was one for me 😀

And then everything went quickly, one sock after another was checked and identified as a sock of worries. And it went on this way until at some point, it ran out of steam.

During that time I started darning 6 socks. In fact, until the creation of this post, I didn't even know if they were all finished. In the course of this post I found out the following: One sock was only half darned (pink with a flower pattern, sock 5), at some point I stopped darning and used it that way. But the rest was finished. But some areas got thin again 😮 I didn't darn enough of the surrounding and which would have reinforced the area on a large scale.

And now all that's left to say is: Have fun with the results 😋

(*) Augsburg is a city in southern Germany and Dult is a term in southeast Germany to describe a fair with the character of a folk festival. This is my translation of the quote by Wikipedia.

(Click on photo to enlarge it)