Hello Menders!
We’ve all lost socks to the Clothes Dryer Creature one time or another, haven’t we? This creature is, of course, an excellent reason to line dry our clothes when we can. But, since not everyone’s situation is conducive to that — your weather might be too cold, or humid, or rainy, or you might need the clothes sooner than that — at least some of us will have to keep feeding socks to the Creature.
The sock isn’t worn out overall, and the hole showed up in roughly the arch area of the underside, so not even a high wear area like the toe or heel. All I can figure about this hole is that the sock escaped from the Creature.
Throwing the sock away seemed like a bad reward for it showing the resilience it takes to get away from the Clothes Dryer Creature, and unraveling it to reclaim the thin yarn it was made out of didn’t seem that much better. I thought about darning it, but the trouble with darning is it makes basically a patch of woven fabric in the middle of a knit garment (the overall sock), and knit fabric is much stretchier than woven fabric. (Yes, you can set up a knit stitch that won’t be, but they don’t use that for socks.) The thought of a tight patch in the middle of a sock gave me preemptive sensory squicks. So, instead, I decided to make a knitted patch right in there.
First, I needed yarn or thread to make the patch out of. Sock hand-knitting yarn is thinner than regular knitting yarn; I actually do have some in the stash, but the yarn used in commercial sock knitting is even thinner. Even six-strand embroidery floss seemed thicker; I ended up splitting the floss down to two strands. Also, since the hole is in a place that doesn’t show, I didn’t even bother trying to match the color, so this is definitely a visible repair. Instead, I picked out a color that I don’t usually wear or use, that I only had because it came in a value pack. However, you could match the color or make a decorative design; that’s what I would have done if this hole were in a place that would show.
After getting the embroidery floss ready, I started a couple rows below the hole, and followed the path of the yarn in the sock with my thread. Instead of using the needle’s pointy end, I pushed the eye through to keep from splitting the sock yarn.
Then, I repeated the process on the next row up.
After that, I noticed that the next row up would have a bit of trouble staying in place because some of the stitches in the next row after it had been eaten by the Clothes Dryer Creature. So, I slipped in a hairpin to do more or less the job of a knitting needle by holding the loops that would become stitches until the next row of stitches were put through them to hold them in place, before putting in the next row of stitches.
Since the floss was getting really short at that point, the last few stitches were put in by using a very thin crochet hook, rather than an embroidery needle.
After that, I placed another hairpin coming across from the opposite side, and passed the loops across from one hairpin to the other. (A very thin knitting needle would have been even better for this!)
Then, I worked my way across the row again. When I got to loops that were on a hairpin, so filling in the hole, instead of on the sides of the hole, I took that loop off of one hairpin and made a loop on the other hairpin, similar to what happens in hand knitting with needles ordinarily but just guiding the thread with a needle instead of with some spare fingers.
After that, I mainly just repeated the process for each row. In further along rows, I ditched the floss when it got short, instead of working it through with a crochet hook. I also had to cut another length of six strands, so arguably I should have cut the whole thing longer in the first place.
Eventually, I got to the top of the hole. At that point, instead of catching the new loops onto the other hairpin, I caught them on the first row above the hole, closing the hole.
Finally, I followed the path of the sock yarn for a couple more rows again, making an upper border around the hole, and tucked in the threads’ loose ends. Now the sock is ready to wear again!
Would I do this again? Sure — it’s maddening to lose a sock that’s otherwise perfectly good; and, after all, it didn’t deserve to be thrown into the scrap bin after it escaped the Clothes Dryer Creature with its life. This technique would be especially worthwhile as a way to save handmade socks, for two reasons: if you still have the last of the yarn from making the socks you would have the option to use it to complete an invisible (or nearly invisible) repair, and although this process was slower than earning the cost of a pair of commercial socks, it was much faster than knitting a whole sock.
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