BrambleStitches

On Friday I noticed that one of the heels in my hand spun socks was starting to wear thin. Today I mended it using duplicate stitch, and I took a bunch of pictures so you can see just what I did. During the hour that I worked on the sock (including photography and interruptions from the children) I slipped into memories of the time when I first knit these socks. It was in the autumn of 2003; Erik had just come back from the war in June, and I was a couple months pregnant with our baby. The whole season was like another honeymoon. I wasn’t a widow, and I was going to be a mama. Life was bliss.

The original socks are knit with plain wool, so I’m repairing them with plain wool (no nylon). Always mend like with like. It is one of the basics of restoration that you never use a stronger material to mend a weaker one, because eventually the repair may actually damage the original. Below are the tools I used for the repair: a blunt yarn needle, scissors, and something to use as a darning egg. I’m using a hand blown glass vase, made by Monte Gennai, my mother-in-law’s mate. He, unfortunately, doesn’t have a website, but he does sell some of his incredible work, so if you’re interested in contacting him, drop me a line. *Note, normally I use the vase as a vase… but it’s the only thing I could find around the house that would work for darning. A light bulb would work, too.*

This is a very picture heavy post, so please click below to see the rest.

The darning egg, or whatever you use, is placed inside the area to be repaired and helps you see the stitches more clearly. It’s other purpose is to ensure that you only sew through one layer of sock, and that the tension of your new stitches remains fairly even. I’m not stretching the sock at all, I’m just holding it gently around the vase. Stretching at this point might break what remains of the original stitches, and this repair works best if they’re still intact.

Start your repair where the knit fabric is still good. You’ll work a couple rows of duplicate stitch before you get to the thin spot to ensure that your repair is well anchored in “healthy” cloth. I started with about three feet of yarn on my needle, and left a tail of about three inches. To start the repair, insert the needle anywhere, but come up at the point of a “V”.

This technique is called duplicate stitch, and it’s often used to add patterns to already knit garments. All you’re doing is following the path of the existing yarn. It’s quite simple.

Work back and forth. Moving up to the next row of stitches involves a bit of clever fudging. Just try to make the jump as smooth as possible on the inside, so you won’t feel it. You can see I’m getting close to the very thin stitches, now. It’s very important at this point to be gentle, or the delicate stitches might just pop.

Continue until you’ve patched the entire area. I went on for several more rows in both directions. Add more yarn as needed, and just leave the tails hanging free.

From the inside, the repair is very smooth and almost invisible. To finish off the repair, pull the yarn tails to the inside of the sock, and snip off. You could weave in the ends a little, if it makes you feel better, but since I made sure to extend my repair into stronger stitches and since weaving in tail ends is pretty much the same as duplicate stitch, but worked from the inside, I feel just fine about snipping the tails off. I left about 1 cm of yarn, and I’m counting on it to fuzz up and felt a little bit as I wear the socks.

The repaired heel next to the mate.

And now they’re on my feet, where they belong. I can’t feel the repair at all, so it was a success. And look, now they finally match!

Knitting, Mending