I’m darning socks again. I recently rediscovered a very nice shop that sells Swedish crafts (which I remembered) and crafts materials (which I had mostly forgotten). The best thing they had was darning mushrooms. I’ve been able to darn some of my favourite socks anyway, but this makes the job a lot easier, and the end result looks better.

The BBC, meanwhile, considers darning mushrooms a historical object, no longer used.

The darning mushroom would have been an essential tool in an era when women were constantly repairing worn socks. Before the advent of synthetic materials, socks and other items of clothing were in constant need of repair. Darning would have been considered a necessary skill for girls and young women, part of their education as future wives and mothers. The mushroom was used to make repairs to clothing, bed linen etc a practice that has largely disappeared with the development of modern textiles.

I don’t agree with the BBC about using the mushroom for bed linen, though. This is for darning holes in stretchy, knitted materials, not in woven textiles.

The mushroom brought back memories of a mending tool that really is no longer used: latch ladder menders. My mum had one of these. It was really fiddly to use, but the mend was practically invisible. The instructions in the photo suggest stretching the stocking over an egg cup. Since my mum worked in chemistry, we used a small lab beaker instead.