Vintage darning egg, mushroom, sock form for sewing, mending, darning, repairs. Wood or glass. With/without handle. Plain or painted.

Description

In (previous generations of) make-do times, it was common to use a dried out gourd as a darning surface for woolen mends. Since we’re guessing most of you didn’t set up your pandemic garden with sock repair in mind, we’ve pulled together a whole bunch of different options to meet this purpose (because if y’all aren’t darning your socks yet, the bug will surely hit soon…).

Some of these offerings are traditional darning tools. Others are beautiful alternatives and/or budget solutions (no gourds in stock just yet)… it’s always good to align ones tools with both form and functional preferences if you plan to spend a goodly amount of time working with them.

Here’s a description of each style:

Traditional wooden darning egg w/ handle: the ones you’re probably most familiar with – typically a turned wood tool w/ egg shaped form. Typical finishes are clear varnish or black paint.

Wooden darning mushroom: another traditional option that can be harder to find.

Antique hand-blown glass eggs (2-3″) work well for not only darning eggs and bunny basket filler, but also for encouraging backyard chickens to lay their own (just pop them into mama’s nest and wait…).

Our smaller, unpainted wooden eggs (2 “) are great for traveling kits and smaller/kid-sized hands. New old stock.

2-3” hand-painted wooden pysanky eggs are traditionally a Ukrainian Easter decoration. We took it upon ourselves to find some attractive vintage ones that might add an extra pop of color to your textile repair efforts.

We’ve recently come into some gorgeous antique wooden eggs in a 3-4” size. Their history of use is beautifully evident.

Sock Forms are shaped to fit a typical stocking from toe-to-arch, somewhat flat with a rounded handle. If you choose the ‘dowel’ option, you’ll receive the more primitive model as shown in the photo with the tomato orange background.

Egg/Mushroom combo: the first we’ve come across, this one does double duty with the flatter mushroom surface on one end of the handle, and a classic egg on the other.

Jeezus: one of a kind hand-painted, lacquered Russian wood egg with a handy, flat surface on one side – this one’s a bit more versatile than a traditional darning egg *IF* you don’t mind poking the big guy in the eye while you mend. Comes with a tiny lacquered stand so your new friend can watch you when you’re *not* mending.

Any will do: while we stock specific styles of darning forms we sometimes stumble onto other types that work well… other times, we may just have a bunch of a certain size on hand. When you choose this option, we’ll happily reward your flexibility with a lower price point.

We hope that this approach will make it easy for you to find what you want at a price that works.

Your order will be shipped in 100% secondhand packaging and will not be put on a plane.

We’ll be good to you with this order- thanks for supporting our work!