Ply and Burl

Gentle grannies with lace lap blankets in rocking chairs, quietly mending all of life’s rips and bruises with just a thread and needle? Have you had that little daydream? That’s the one that has kept me fascinated with darning socks for years.

One summer, I searched garage sales high and low for a darning egg — and, remarkably, I did find one! However, since then, I haven’t done a thing with it. Back then, there wasn’t much on the old internet about darning. But my how things have changed.

So, here I present you with my semi-periodic “list of useful links on one topic that also lead you to other cool discoveries” (for back issues, see here and here). Maybe I need to come up with a better name for this burgeoning tradition! Anyway, drum roll please:

How to Darn Socks So They Look Reknit

I found lots of sites with instructions for a simple woven darning technique, but I omitted them because, well, that technique is ugly! And we won’t have it!

Once Upon a Pattern has fantastic diagrams accompanying an explanation of “stocking web darning.” A lot of sites I found claimed to know how to darn, but were really just tossing some yarn in the hole. This site’s darning method is full of tecnique and details — it’s got class and panache! (Thanks to The Blue Blog for the link.)

HJ Studio has the most attractive looking final darning patch photographs that I found. She uses the technique shown in Once Upon a Pattern and it comes out beautifully!

And that’s all! All the rest were, like I said, pretty ugly.

A few fun related discoveries:

Theresa had some luck with both methods, and posted a bunch of links to other darning explanations.

Vintage Sewing has got to be the coolest site I’ve come across in a while. They offer “free online access to public domain sewing books.” The darning page is from a book called “American Dressmaking Step by Step” published in 1917! The darning info is generally about woven fabrics, though, so this didn’t make the main list.

Kell’s Craft is another site publishing books in the public domain where I found this totally uninstructive but beautifully illustrated story called The Darning Needle.

Finally, here is a sweet little poem about darning that totally confirms the my granny daydream can. be. real.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 8:38 am and is filed under Tidbits, Yarn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.