A Simple Way to Cover a Hole in a Sock

I’m not quite sure how this old post ended up on my radar, but this guide to sewing a patch to cover a hole in a knit sock is timeless.

The tutorial, from Jackie E-S, shows how to cover up a hole by picking up stitches below the hole, stitching a patch that is attached to the sock as you knit, then grafting the patch onto the stitches of the sock below the patch.

It’s a really great idea and an easier way to do it than more traditional darning where you’re trying to re-create the lost stitches. It of course doesn’t look seamless — you might not have matching yarn by the time you need to fix a hole, anyway — but the odds are that a place that needs mending won’t show when you’re wearing shoes, anyway, and visible mending is kind of cool, too.

I haven’t been knitting socks long enough to have needed to fix holes in any of them, but I do have a pair that I think might need some reinforcement soon.

How about you? Have you ever mended a hole in a sock? How did you do it?

[Photo via Jackie E-S.]

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I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

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