I've never had a heel wear out. My wool socks wear on the ball of the foot,
>and I just take some leftover yarn and "darn" it. One thing I do need to
>buy is a darning egg, which would make it much easier.
Shelagh
My DH worked in a fabric store and learned that many women used to buy Leggs pantyhose that came in the plastic egg so they could use the eggs to darn their socks. Unfortunately Leggs doesn't use them as packages anymore.
I told him if the Leggs plastic egg worked, then why not buy large plastic Easter eggs from the store and use those to darn socks now? I also use the smaller ones for catnip balls. I take the smaller eggs apart and put the flat side down, and then use an icepick to carefully poke holes in the small eggs, poking away from my hand, then fill them up with catnip, snap them back together, and let the cats have a blast. Ours love that the eggs wobble around and don't roll straight.
They are light enough they shouldn't pull the sock out of shape like the rock egg darner I got some years back, so I'm going to hit up the local store for my yearly supply of Easter eggs for cat toys and now larger ones for me to darn socks with!
Leah