I love darning socks. Mostly because I love my wool socks and refuse to give them up. Darning is like the duct tape of sewing fixes. It's inexpensive, durable, and stays put.
Darning wool is easy to find. JoAnn's carries it in the US and both Spotlight and Lincraft carry it in Australia. You'll need tapestry needles, darning needles, or those kid plastic needles, anything with a large eye. You can use a darning mushroom inside your sock, but an orange or lightbulb will do.
Darning doesn't just grab edges and pull them together. No matter how much you wish it did.
It's a lovely process of creating a fabric by weaving back and forth across the hole and into the fabric to recreate the missing area.
Here are some lovely sites to show you how to darn your socks. You can also use this technique with sheets and cottons by sewing back and forth on your sewing machine and then again up and down.
How to Darn Socks
Make Do and Darn
Mending knits is a bit of a mystery to me as I don't actually knit and I know that if you cut something crocheted, you are cutting right through a long line of knots. What to do if your jersey knit tshirt, wool sweater, or granny square blankets gets a hole?
First determine if it is on a seam or not. If it's a seam, easy peasy, just sew it back together again. If it's a moth eaten hole or a tear or a broken stitch, there are some methods for repairing it.
You can always patch a sweater, especially a wool sweater, and to be honest, you will probably be up-trending it if you do. Especially if you patch with with either rustic homespun or linen or a woven fabric of a tribal or global quality. For that "I could be a yarn-bomber" look, use a felted wool patch from another sweater.
If you want to properly mend your knits, take a look at these tutorials and follow-alongs:
Knitty.com - Repairing Knitwear
How to Fix a Small Hole in a Knit
