Lazy Sunday - Darning and Day-Dreaming

Tutu has not been doing a very good job of blogging lately.  It's not that I'm not reading, it's just that real life keeps getting in the way of writing reviews.  It's that glorious time of year when the days here in Maine are usually warm, the evenings crisp and cool, the harvest bounty is still plentiful, and we find ourselves already making plans for the fall.  Thus the book cover....

Fall brings back closed toed shoes and SOCKS.  In case you haven't noticed, the price of socks, along with everything else has gone through the financial ceiling, and the quality has fallen out the basement door.  In other words, those $7 a pair socks are lucky they last 7 wearings.  I used to just ignore small holes in socks (as long as they weren't visible to others, and then, when the holes had grown too big, I'd either keep them for wearing on hands for furniture dusting, or throw them out.  I even went through a phase where I pretended I was a very "with it" younger person and wore mismatched socks, telling anyone who stared they were a fashion statement.  That only lasted about three times.


Now I have a whole basket of socks, many of them among my favorites, all of which have mates, but none of which can be worn because they have holes in them.  For the past month, I've been on the hunt for an old fashioned darning egg-like the one seen here.  They seem to exist only in my memory or in museums these days.  I have decided to try the next best thing - a baseball bat- and plan to spend some time this evening working on at least one pair of socks to practice  darning techniques.

My mother was quite often heard to remind us when she was growing up after the Great Depression, and then through World War II, citizens were constantly reminded to use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.  And I do remember someone in my family (grandmother, mother, aunt?) using a darning egg.  Or it may have been in Girl Scouts?  Maybe that's where I was exposed to the basics.  I've studied the videos and step by step guides on the internet, and have chosen a pair of my least favorites to use for practice.  So we'll see.

In the meantime, it's a lovely day for a walk, and maybe a listen to an audio book while I prep the peaches and pork chops for dinner.

Enjoy the autumn....get out and soak up the gentle weather, get the wood pile stacked and the vegetables put up.  Winter won't be far behind. 

Match up those socks and get them darned.