Darning Socks

I brought socks to darn to knitting group the other day.  I've never darned socks before, why would I?  My socks are from Wal-Mart.  They generally last two years before they are holey or stretched out and are retired to the circular file.  Socks are cheap, and their repair is not on my top ten list of important things to do this week.  

But a few years ago my mother gave me a pair of wool socks she made many, many years ago. She had worn them, washed them by hand and darned them with care as the years passed.  I've now worn them for four years.  This fall when I unpacked the winter clothes from their bins I noticed that holes had developed in the toes.  What to do?  These are not the kind of socks you just throw away; they are meant to be fixed. They are meant to out-live me.  

So I took them to the group where I was sure there was enough talent and experience to pass on this nearly lost tradition.  Learning to darn was not to be a problem.  Finding the yarn to match was a different story.  These knee-high socks with a cable running up the sides are light gray. The meeting was held, on this particular week, at a yarn shop.  Light gray, fingerling weight yarn; how hard could this be? After half an hour scouring the yarn bins, it was clear that no such color was to be found, nor any other shade of gray.  I was totally deflated.  

As I prepared to put the socks away and begin an Internet search for just the right shade of gray I was lovingly reminded that I was the author of a particular blog, a blog for perfectionists in recovery.  Hint. Hint.  The irony was so absurd I burst out laughing as my face reddened.  The group reminded me that I was repairing the toes, no one would see the repair, except me.  Of course, that was the problem.  I would know.  Using any other color had not entered my mind as a possibility.  To use another color would be to alter her work, mar these hand-made artful creations.  It felt disrespectful.  But practicality won the moment.  In a second trip to the shop scanning the yarn bins with new eyes, searching for creative possibilities, I found a medium blue with gray woven in. A compromise I could live with.  The darning lesson was successful, but the result far from perfect, and I'm not referring to the contrasting blue yarn.  Still, mission accomplished.

As I worked on the socks, turning them inside and out and back again I noticed the areas darned in year's past.  The yarn was dark gray.  Funny, I never noticed that before.  Seems practicality had won out for the sock maker as well.  In a perfect world, enough yarn would have been set aside, in a place that would not be forgotten, so that each darning could incorporate the original yarn.  But these socks were not created, nor ever mended, in the perfect conditions I had imagined for them.  

What ever is, really?