conuly

Let's run the numbers just so you can tell her how wrong she is. :-D

The darning egg I linked to above is $8.95. Mine happened to be a free gift from my grandmother. I also have one that I bought at a garage sale for $3. Averaging these prices, let's say four dollars for the darning tool (and that's erring on the generous side, since I darned socks for years with only the aforementioned lightbulb).

A pack of multiuse needles can be had for $.99 at every supermarket I've ever been in.

Yarn...ah, now you have to choose. I'm going to err on the generous side again and cite my own cost ($1/ounce for carded wool roving, which I then spin into yarn) as well as that of a high-end wool yarn from Knitpicks dot com (http://www.knitpicks.com): their Telemark 100% wool sportweight is $1.99 per ball for 103 yards. This works out to roughly two cents per yard of yarn. (If you buy bargain-barn acrylic, it's MUCH, much cheaper, probably like one-tenth of a cent per yard.)

SO, amortize the $4 and the 99 cents over a lifetime of socks and it gets pretty damned cheap. The only non-amortized cost is the yarn. It takes two or three yards (depending on the size of the hole) to darn one hole in one sock....say six cents' worth of yarn. Call it a quarter to include amortized costs of needle and darning thingy.

My favorite socks are $6 a pair to buy.

I think it's cheaper to darn, what do you think?