Wednesday, September 14, 2011

No Rest for the Footed

Good news, everyone! I've hit on a way to extend the life of my socks!

You know how the heel of the sock is generally the first thing to go? Often, even if the rest of the sock is still in pretty good shape, there will be a big hole in the heel that makes it uncomfortable to wear.

In the old days, we (or our hard-working mothers) might have darned these holes, basically weaving a little extra fabric out of thread to patch it up, and this is good honest labor, but honestly it takes more time than it's worth to me anymore.

And yet, I still wish to pull the last fraying threads of usefulness from every piece of clothing!

What to do?

This trick doesn't work with ankle socks, or very short socks, but I find that if your hole-heeled sock goes a bit of the way up the leg, say to mid-calf or so, you can just roll the 'neck' of the sock down, over the heel.

You have to pull it pretty far down, so it tucks under the heel of your foot, otherwise it will just ride up. This stretches the neck of the sock out and wrecks the elastic, but since we're already talking about socks you don't wear because there are holes in the heels, I don't think this is a huge problem.

I've crafted this fine illustration to explain the simple brilliance of the scheme.

Now you have wrinkly, uneven ankle socks (because there's more fabric in front), and you're walking on a tiny ridge of fabric, but at least your shoes won't be chafing your heels through the holes.

Brilliant, right? I'm sure someone else has thought of this already, but they couldn't be bothered to share it with the class, so I had to come up with it on my own.

Some people may be thinking, at this point, "why don't you just go buy new socks?"

And I wish it were that easy. I really do.

No comments: