1. Show mother how you can mend a straight tear by mending one for her at home. Perhaps there is a straight tear in her dress, or in a towel or napkin.
2. Why is it worth while to mend it?
Lesson 3
DARNING STOCKINGS
We all have stockings to darn each week as they come from the laundry. Do you mend the small holes at once, or let them grow larger?
It is always a saving of time and energy to take care of the small holes; small ones grow to be larger ones if one is not careful. It pays to mend at once. We will learn how to mend stockings.
Courtesy of H. Brinton Co.
Fig. 99.—The knitting machine. Caps, stockings, and underwear are made on similar machines.
Stocking darning differs from darning the straight or the square tear, because, as a rule, there is a hole in the stocking. The stocking material is worn away, and it is necessary to replace it with a small piece of weaving over and under of warp and filling. A patch or extra piece of material might be placed under the hole, but that would be uncomfortable; so a woven piece is put in. The stocking is made of knitted material called stockinet, not of woven cloth. How do they differ? Can you think of other articles of clothing made of knitted material? Yes, mittens, sweaters, caps, underwear. Have you ever seen a knitting machine? Here is a picture (Fig. 99) of one showing how the stocking is knitted in the factory to-day on the knitting machines. In weaving there are two threads. What are they? In knitting there is only one thread; just like grandmother's knitting of the stocking round and round as the tiny loops are formed. Have you ever torn your stocking in a loop and had it run right down the whole leg of the stocking? Barbara Oakes had this experience. That shows how the tiny loops are made. If one catches the loop, the raveling is prevented.