mendling hose

I've been tackling a closet here in my study, which if not strictly speaking untidy, certainly needs some work, and some firm decisions about what stays, what goes.  I do tend to keep sewing and mending things - one never knows when they will be useful; when one need precisely that shade of cotton; that sized needles; that button.  I did, though, tidy a showbox of things that had made its way here and that contained many of my mother's mending things - and that meant many of her mother's mending things.

So these spun nylon cards are relics of a time when stocking were expensive - expensive and fairly thick - and graced the legs and ankles of people like my grandmother Doris, and Auntie Jess, and Auntie Lilian - these had their origin in that house, I think.  I certainly wouldn't have been seen dead wearing flesh color stockings - I never had stockings - flesh color tights.  My first tights, c. 1967, were a pale cream color (worn with a Biba skirt, or with a Laura Ashley summer dress): if these and their descendants got holes, the only way to stop them enlarging was with nail varnish (and then, indeed, cream sewing).  Fairly soon after that, I shifted to black, if course, but nail varnish remained useful.  

As for that important advice: "Use several strands to darn feet" - believe me, when I darn my (usually black) socks these days, it's more like industrial strength cotton tying them up again as tightly as possible, figuring no one's going to see.