Darn it!

Ember recently shared an interesting darning tutorial with me.

http://woolandchocolate.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/darning-tutorial/

And then, just this week, I found a nasty little hole in my man's Bugga! socks. It was in a weird spot, under the foot between the ball and the heel.  Not a usual spot for a hole. Which has me suspecting a feline culprit.

Would this sweetie attack a hand knit sock?

Now I've darned before. It usually involves putting in horizontal lines, then weaving in vertical lines and pretty much stitching the heck out of it. It seems to work, but it's not very pretty. So I attempted to follow the tutorial.

This is what the hole looked like as I was starting to stitch around the hole.

And this is with horizontal lines stitched in:

This is my first column of duplicate stitch:

And here is the inside and outside of the completed repair:

Well. It's not gorgeous, but it should hold!

PS--Hidden mostly out of sight inside that sock is the lovely darning egg my father made me.