I make a lot of my own socks, so no way I’m tossing them when they ascend to holeyness. I also have a pair rated for 30° below which I paid a chunk for. So my reaction to heels and toes poking through is not dammit, but darnit.
My egg is a lightbulb, and more often than not I employ the spiderweb method. Anyone else? What’s your egg? Do you weave, spiderweb, or reknit?
Hah. I just recently had a heel hole develop in a sock and was going to throw it away. I buy very generic looking socks, so I can toss one when needed.
I decided to darn it, though. I have a sewing box and was looking for it around the house. My gf saw me and inquired as to why I was roaming the house, sock in hand.
I told her my intentions. She grabbed the sock from me and walked away, muttering and shaking her head.
She threw out the sock and told me if I had $$ problems she would buy me some socks. She doesn’t know how to sew. She once took a jacket to a dry-cleaner/seamstress to have a button sewed on, rather than ask me to do it.
Darning a sock is a therapeutic activity. Meditative, alpha-wavey. And when you’re done you get a nice warm feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. It’s not a poverty thing. For myself I can always knit a new pair–another meditative and satisfying activity–but I’ll still darn a sock rather than toss it. If its a keeper.
I only darn if I am madly in love with the socks (like the blue ones with cashmere I knitted from a yarn called Casbah; lovely). Otherwise I follow the Yarn Harlot’s motto: when a sock gets a hole I say “darn it” and then drop it gently into the trash. But I really like knitting socks almost as much as I like buying sock yarn, so I am always glad to make another pair.
Another darning fan here, if the sock is good and I have appropriate darning material. I do not know this “spiderweb method” of which the OP speaks, I just do the usual “weave”.
My one weird tip which is obvious to anybody with an IQ greater than an avocado’s is that darning sure is easier if you get to it while the hole is still very small.
I might have made it up. I go around the perimeter and string spokes across the hole. Then I spiral a satin stitch around this armature, from the center out.
I darn woolen hiking socks, which I wear probably 8 months of the year. And the woolen sweaters of which I have quite a collection. I use a wooden darning egg I found in an antique/junk shop long ago. Easy to find them on etsy etc. I have darning wool of various colors and a couple different darning needles. I go around the perimeter at least once and then weave.
I also mend and patch my clothes and my husband’s. I think disposable clothes are an evil.
Jo-Ann’s the fabric store also sells wooden darning eggs-in their sewing notions department.
They are also easy to find at estate sale type sales, even heirs cleaning out a house after a death having a garage sale. If there is a walker being sold, your chances are much better that you’ll find a darning egg—-and where is a darning egg is usually a button box, a real fun find. A person usually is of a certain age to have had one.
If you lived at my house I’d blame the cats. I have only wood floors and that lovely wooden egg makes such a fascinating noise rolling under the couch, never to be seen again.
I stumble through crude, entirely untutored repair jobs on clothes that I’m not ready to part with yet. I’m not worried about creating works of art, particularly if it’s on the part of the sock that will never be visible or a crappy T-shirt suitable mostly for the gym and lounging about. Mom has said positive things about my efforts, although she was probably just being nice.
I am good at stitching things but do not often sew. I’ll put buttons on beloved jeans or jackets or will (very infrequently) paint or patch or modify clothes or shoes, trying to make them more interesting (and not always succeeding). But I leave zippers to the pros, and regrettably will usually toss holey socks rather than repairing them, even if I like them.