Sock Eggs

Ever since I saw this post about the usefulness of a darning egg for grafting sock toes (and such a beautiful darning egg!), I wanted one, even though I am very partial to toe-up socks for a number of reasons, one of which is avoiding grafting sock toes.

Imagine my surprise to find I already owned one:


This was sitting around in an ugly old plastic sewing box that a friend had given to me and DD after his mom passed away. I know I must have seen this before, but it just didn't register before I read Deb's post.

And then I became intrigued and made the mistake of searching Ebay for darning eggs. And found these:


I bid $2.25 (I know, such a fortune!) and immediately regretted it. Why was I bringing more crap into the house? We're trying to cut down on our crap! I waited, hoping to be out-bid, but no such luck. I even asked my friend Ang to choose 2 of the 4 for herself, hoping to jinx it (that wasn't very nice of me, was it?), but it didn't jinx it, and these are supposed to be on their way to me as we speak. Still, I feel better knowing that 2 of them will immediately leave the house again.

I do feel that one of the wonderful things about knitting is the connection with those who have gone before -- even if we try new materials, tools and methods, and do this as a hobby and not a necessity (most of us), the basics are the same and connect us to knitters from earlier times. Not that I feel like a pioneer woman as I knit a sock, but -- well, maybe I do, a tiny bit.