Internet advertising on Instagram did a good job targeting me. I saw a reel of this little device, and after some obsessive research, I bought two of them, one big and one small. Mine is not as nice as the one I would have bought from Snuggly Monkey, if they had them in stock. And I may yet upgrade. We shall see.
Essentially, the device is a loom that allows you to weave a bit of a rug over your holes. Here’s a sock with two holes in the heel.
Setting up the warp yarns. (I used sashiko thread for this one)
After that, you weave the weft yarns back and forth, reversing the direction of the hooks after every row. You end up with a little checkerboard that looks like this:
My first attempt shows some shoddiness, but that’s what first attempts are for, no? At the last row, you remove the loom and tack the loops from the warp yarn down on the sock (otherwise you are left with a little pocket) and then weave the ends into the sock.
I wasn’t sure if the darn would me distracting to me. It does add an additional layer to your sock. I’ve found that I can feel it when I first put the sock on, but after about two minutes, my body adjusts and I don’t notice the rest of the day.
Hooray for this fun new thing! I’m excited to see what else I can do with it.