Mending holes in footwear by stretching the torn area over the mouth of a glass or over a maraca-like wood “darning egg” and then weaving threads across the hole to form a kind of netting. According to the 1943 classic Mending Made Easy, “If you are a big girl with a new husband’s socks to take care of, your alertness to his material needs is sure to make a real hit with him.” Fixing high-quality socks was a common evening activity for American mothers and grandmothers who did it with love; today, making cheap new socks from scratch is a common evening activity for Chinese mothers and grandmothers who do it for $1 an hour.