Which came first - the sock or the egg?

Well, in this case, I think it was clearly the egg! We have a chronology here in the picture - 2011 Marks and Spencer socks, 1970s flowered sewing basket, and pre-1950 French darning egg. The pack of otherwise super M&S mail-order socks included one that sprang a hole almost the moment Ben put it on. I was all for sending it back and complaining, but Ben thought it wasn't worth the trouble ("c'est pas la peine") and asked if the sock was at all mendable.

I thought I'd give it a go, as I'd mended a lot of sock seams in my time, and had 'sort-of' darned a few things, and had read instructions in both 'Make Do and Mend' and 'How Green are my Wellies?'

Picking the right darning wool for a sock which is red, pink and black, was no trouble at all, as I could only find white in my vintage darning wool 'collection'!

And it turned out all right. The proof of the darning was in the wearing - I said to Ben one evening: 'Have you found that sock I darned yet?' and he replied that he hadn't realised I'd done it. He took off his shoe to check which socks he'd been wearing all day and, lo and behold, he'd been comfortably walking around for the last 12 hours without realising he had a darned sock! So I'd say it worked.

j

Thanks for your continued, much-valued comments. We are now on holiday, and the reduced timetable of the last few school days meant that Son 2 could pop in and out of school whenever he had a lesson, which meant we could also manage his painkillers and general exhaustion. My father has been discharged from hospital and the boys and I will be flying out to visit him on Tuesday! We are very grateful.