All winter long, I wear wool socks - mostly hand-knit. I'm a lucky girl who usually has very warm feet.
My mum knit me a whole sock wardrobe a couple of years ago....and even before that, I had a few pairs of her socks. The only downside to hand-knit socks is that when you wear them all of the time, they don't last forever.
A while back I returned a couple of pairs that were wearing through at the heel. She's fixed this problem before by knitting a little patch and grafting it in place (and now usually doubles her yarn when knitting the heel, as preventative medicine), but on the most recent fixes, the problem was a bit more severe. Since my mum can be quite determined, she actually did a much bigger mend on these recent pairs, cutting the foot off each sock, carefully ripping back the felted stitches to where it was still 'good', picking the up stitches, re-knitting the heel + another inch or so below (where most of the wear happened), and they carefully grafting the other half in place. Tedious work, that is for sure.....but as she says, "it's not as long as knitting a whole (new) sock!"
She did a pretty good match for colour on this pair (and another)....and I'm sure that after a couple of wears and washes, the patch will be barely distinguishable. Thanks Mum! xxoo
