It arrived in a shoebox with a note: my grandmother’s, she never threw anything away. Inside was one grey wool sock, the heel and toe so thoroughly rebuilt that very little of the original knitting survives. We counted eleven separate repairs. Some are neat and tight, a tiny woven square. Others are hurried and lumpy, done by lamplight by someone who had many more socks waiting.
A small loom
Darning is not knitting. A darn is woven: the mender stretches the worn area over a wooden mushroom or an egg, runs parallel threads across the hole, then weaves across them at right angles, over and under, until a new patch of fabric fills the gap. Look closely and every darn is a miniature loom, made with a needle and a lot of attention.
The yarn in this sock does not match. There are at least four greys, one of them almost blue, and one repair on the toe in a brownish thread that looks as if it was unpicked from something else. In a year when wool was rationed, you mended with what you had, and what you had was often another garment that had reached the end of its life.
What the repairs record
It is tempting to read the sock as a record of hardship, and it is that. But it also records something warmer. Somebody sat with this sock eleven times. Somebody decided, eleven times, that it was worth the evening. The tightest darns, on the heel, look as though they were made for a person the mender loved; the rough ones on the toe look like they were made in a hurry, before the morning.
We know almost nothing about the woman who wore it, or the one who mended it, if they were not the same person. But we know the sock went on long after it should have ended, and that someone refused, again and again, to let it go.
Every darn is a small refusal to let the cold win.
Every darn is a small refusal to let the cold win.
