The 'darn' truth...

Today I found a hole in one of my favorite red sweaters so I decided to mend it the way my mother used to darn our socks. I had watched her many times as a child. She always had a darning basket full of socks, darning thread, needle, thimble and a wooden darning mallet (have no idea what it was called) with a round ball on the end. She would put the heel of the sock on the mallet and proceed to sew threads across the hole and then go back and actually weave the thread over and under very closely so when she finished you had a sock stronger in that area than it was before. With six children there were always lots of socks to darn.

Since my Dad actually managed and then owned a department store, you would have thought they could afford new socks but not so. My children and grandchildren have no idea how frugal our parents lived. Richard used to hate the patched jeans he had to wear, but that was life in our childhood era. The following is a quote from a letter my Mom had written me about my birth in 1933.

"Ellen (Aunt) took care of the children while I was in the hospital and we furnished the food to feed both families. She could really cook good food with very little. Nothing was wasted. We used to save all the peelings from vegetables, cook them till tender, put them through a sieve and season and it was very good."

P. S. My sweater actually looks quite good so glad I learned that little task from watching my Mom.