Mending clothes, making basic automotive repairs, fixing plumbing leaks, and the ability to “McGyver” amazing contraptions all may seem like they are too challenging for people raised in this techno era.

Tapping into your inner grandpa and grandma may inspire you to look around at what you can fix or repurpose in your closets and drawers. Making things last is a good thing these days, right?

Perhaps you lack the tools or know-how for working on your vehicle or plumbing, but anyone can learn to darn a sock. If you wear nice wool or alpaca socks, for example, you’ll want to make them last. And even if you didn’t knit them yourself, the hand-knitters in your life will be impressed that you appreciate these special gifts enough to preserve them. (You might earn yourself a few more pairs by taking care of those you already own!)

Darning reinforces the area where the fibers are wear-damaged, giving you many additional years of wear. The pair I will use as my example were knit (by me) of yarn that isn’t really suited to socks but I loved it and made them out of it anyway. Consequently, the cuff will never wear out, but I have made repeated repairs to the sole by darning.

Supplies

• Favorite sock with a hole in it.
• Darning needle (these are large blunt-ended needles with eyes big enough to thread with yarn.
• Some scrap yarn, at least 45 inches—it should be of a similar thickness as the yarn the socks were originally knit from but doesn’t have to be the same yarn or be a matching color. No one will see the darned area but you.
• An actual or improvised darning egg: this can be a smooth egg-sized rock (I use a baseball) but please don’t use a real egg.

Step-by-Step

1. Drop your improvised darning egg into the sock so that you have a solid, rounded base to work against.
2. Holding the sock firmly against the darning egg, run a line of stitches around the hole, about 1/8 t0 1/4 inch in from the hole’s edge (this will depend on the thickness of the original yarn used to knit the sock). Your line of stitches should look like this – - – - – - you do this by dipping your needle in and out of the sock’s fabric. Leave a tail of yarn that is about 3 inches long, which you’ll weave in to hide and secure when done darning. (see photo below)
3. Now you’ll create a series of long stitches that go from one side of the hole to the other (like setting up one of those potholder looms when you were little). Use the row of stitches surrounding the hole as your guide and make these stitches fairly close to one another, being careful not to pull in the edges of the original hole, which will cause your sock to become misshapen. To avoid that, just hold the sock tightly over the “egg.” (see photo below)
4. Finally, create a perpendicular row of long stitches, weaving them over and under the first row of long stitches you made, resulting in a lattice, or basketweave pattern. Your goal in this step is to create a snugly woven section of fabric, so use the end of the darning needle to compact the woven stitches against each other every other row or so. (see photo below)
5. Weave loose ends into the inside of the darned area and clip with scissors.