In my sewing box, which used to belong to my grandmother, there's a wooden egg. It's just like the ones I've always seen in my mother's and my aunts' sewing boxes. This simple and timeless tool is used for a very specific activity, almost an art form. Wooden eggs are available in many stores in this country, but the art itself, sadly, is being lost.
It's the art of mending socks. I for one rarely need to mend socks. The boys basically live in their tennis clothes, with padded sports socks that can't easily be mended, but also wear out in to next to nothing. Tom doesn't dress formally very often, and mainly wears sports socks and comfy shoes. However, in winter Rebecca and I wear the kinds of socks that occasionally need mending. This is when the wooden egg of my childhood memories comes out.
In the last couple of low-energy days, mending socks was just the level of activity I needed.
Mending socks is as much weaving as sewing: place the wooden egg inside the sock under the hole, and gently stretch the cloth around it. Notice where the hole is in relation to the weave of the sock and cover the hole with long horizontal stitches more or less parallel to the weave. Then start making vertical stitches, interweaving them with your horizontal stitches, thus closing the hole.
I'm always surprised by how quick and easy sock-mending is, and how much I enjoy this act - small, but satisfying - of rejuvenating a garment that would otherwise be thrown away, together with its (healthy) other half.
