Mending

Occasionally I mend things.  A new button on my husband's shirt or a repaired hem are things I'm comfortable with.  I could replace a zipper if it was really important. Mending knitwear is something new for me. For the last 35 years we have lived on the upper Gulf Coast of Texas so not a huge need for sweaters. I have talked about my small collection of sweaters here recently. Most of the things I have knit in the last 25 years have been for sale or for gifts, neither of which will require my attention to repair.

Spin Off's winter 2021 issue has a wonderful cover full of decretive darning ideas to go with an interesting article by Susan Z. Douglas called Flexible Embroidery and Decorative Darning - Stretchy Stitches for Knitted Fabric. I like the idea of making one's repairs bright and colorful.  It's the exact opposite of anything I learned in Home Economics class about making your repairs completely invisible.

Then I ran into the work of Fiona Collingwood-Norris (www.collingwoodnorrisdesign.com).  She teaches several classes, all of which were virtual in 2020, about Visible Mending. So the seeds were planted in my mind.  This is something I would have to try.

Then here comes our polar vortex and I have pulled all my sweaters out. They were looked at critically, tried on and sorted.  Between my sweaters and my husbands, we filled a large black trash bag of useful but not to us sweaters that have now been donated.

One of the sweaters I am keeping is my fisherman knit cardigan.  It's old - I knitted it decades ago - but it's still in good shape.  At some point in the past I realized it had a moth hole along the edge of the collar.  When I pulled all my sweaters out, I found that hole yet again but now it was time to repair it.

The sweater is a cream/beige marl yarn that I love.  I have some Shetland wool that is as close to the same color as you could get without finding another skein of this same yarn.  But I chose a bright red yarn for the repairs. 

I fixed that hole before I wore the sweater all day on Thursday. When I put the sweater on again this morning, I found a second hole just above the waist band in the front left. Well, crap.  Maybe it would be worth my time to really inspect the sweater closely to see what else I could find.  Sure enough there was one more small hole along the underarm/raglan shape line.

Now all the holes are repaired and I love the contrast of the bright red with the soft cream/beige. I would even be tickled to find some other hole to be mended.  I'm getting better at this!