I know. These photos are never going to make me an influencer, but I guess I’ll have to live with that. I darned my socks! I was a bit annoyed when they got a hole to be honest, as it felt like I’d only had them for 5 minutes. But according to the internet, I finished these in May 2021, which is not a bad life for a pair of socks. I wear these a lot at home.

I assumed I’d make a hash of fixing them, but actually, I didn’t do too badly. I used this video to help. It’s good. I knitted a patch because, as much as I love all the woven visibly-mended stuff, I didn’t think it would be strong enough for a heel.

Actually, that patch above is a preemptive one, as the yarn is wearing thin. It’s the second patch of the day. The first was to cover this hole:

It was a huge hole. Also a huge pain, as I had to add stitches to widen the patch as I went, because it started at the narrow end of the heel. The blue thing peeking through is a massage roller ball. Not that good for massaging muscles, but does ok as a darning egg in a pinch.

I don’t love the left and right edge stitches being a little bigger on both of these, but they’re slipped so they get a wee bit baggy. I assume they’ll tighten up when the socks are washed. Things that seem good about this:

• You’re supposed to knit the patch with a smaller needle, so the stitches are naturally a bit more dense, which seems like a good thing
• The original wool should felt itself into the patch as it’s worn and washed, so that should make it stronger too

So that’s that. i thought I’d hate doing it, but actually I enjoyed it. Not sure why.

In other news, I need to make another duckling. We had guests on Saturday, and the duckling was quickly adopted by K, 5. It came to the park with us, down the slide, on the roundabout and back again. Come hometime there were pleas from K and apologies from parents. I offered to make K a ducking of her own. “How long will it take? A day? Ok, we’ll come round tomorrow”.

I should probably get started on that.