More Socks, Darn It!

About a week after I started darning socks in earnest, we were cleaning out winter clothes at our house. My husband found a pair of socks in the back of a dresser drawer and wondered out loud, "Why on earth do I still have these socks in my drawer?"  I looked around & felt my sentimental knitter's heart lurch a little bit.

 
He was holding the first pair of socks I made for him.  Socks I knit in 1989.  Seriously.  You know, in the last century!  They are not in great shape.  They are not in horrible shape either.

So the question became this:  can we fix them? The holes are pretty symmetrical,  and I could see that darning wasn't the answer--the worn out spot included the turn of the heel.  On Thursday, I couldn't really concentrate on a big project, so I got these socks out & decided I had nothing to lose.

 I picked up a row of stitches on the bottom of the foot, grabbed a second dpn and purled across the row. At the end of every other row or so, I added a stitch from the worn edge and kept on knitting. I improvised a simple turn with 6 short rows, then knit up to the worn out edge of the heel flap.  Once I got there, I picked up along the edge & then kitchenered the stitches together.

 It isn't perfect, but it worked, and these 23 year old socks can be worn again. Or they can just go back into the back of that drawer--but I feel sentimental about fixing them.