Tag Archives: mending

Love and Mending

I wasn’t always a knitter. Nobody in my family really taught me how to knit. (I think my grandmother tried once when I was seven. It didn’t take.) In fact, I only started knitting not long after I started dating Brock. He would meet me in Lawrence after my knitting class let out of the Yarn Barn and we’d go eat noodles at Zen Zero. Even then he was asking me if I would knit him a sweater. I started with a scarf, a little reluctant to commit to a whole sweater so soon.

Brocks Sweaters

I did finally knit him a sweater in 2011, ignoring all the boyfriend sweater jokes everyone made as I worked on it. The classic Cobblestone turned out really great! So great, that last year, I decided to knit him another, The Ishmael Sweater. He has worn one of the these sweaters every day the weather has been less than balmy for the last two years. I take it as the deepest, most loving of compliments that he wears them so much. He understands that when I knit for him, it is an act of love.

And he has just about loved these sweaters to rags.

Holy Sweaters
The elbows on both sweaters look like this. I have patched the green one multiple times. He has only just worn through the elbows on the red one.

Armpit Hole
He also somehow managed to completely rip out the kitchener stitch from one of the underarms. I was hoping this year’s sweater would be finished before the red one gave out, but no such luck. It’s also still January, so he’ll be needing something warm to wear for at least the next two months, but I managed to sneak these away for the afternoon.

Knowing that all my careful elbow mending only lasts a few weeks, this afternoon I finally purchased some of these at JoAnn:
elbow patches
Leather elbow patches. Let’s see him wear through these!

I started with the red sweater, because the mending was simpler. I sewed up the holes on the elbows (though perhaps not as neatly as I would have done had I not been intending to cover them up) and then I closed up the underarm again. I gave the whole sweater a good rubbing with the sweater stone, and then sat down to sew on the arm patches.

The nice thing about these patches, is that they already have holes poked in them, which I think is why they cost so much more than just a regular old swatch of suede. However, the holes were the perfect sewing guide, because I am a lousy hand-sewer with no patience.

But after about an hour’s worth of work, I had a smartly repaired sweater.
Repaired Ishmael

You’ll notice the patches aren’t in the same place on each sleeve. While aesthetically, I would have liked to have them match up perfectly while the laid on my work table, I decided centering them over the most worn parts of the sleeve would be more practical. And sure enough, as soon as Brock tried it on, the patches didn’t look at all lopsided, but covered his elbows perfectly.

Mending

Cold outside, beautiful light streaming in the windows onto my bead table/sewing table. It's a lovely old thing with a wooden top and cast iron legs. It used to be a two person desk in a schoolroom. It has old carved and written words on it, and glue I've spilled on it, and my grandmother's pincushion, and a complicated mess of beads and potential projects and needles for almost any kind of beading or sewing project you can think of. Yesterday I sat down in this lovely spot to work on some mending.

Mending is very satisfying work for me. You take something that is basically good that needs some small (or large) repair and make it usable again. Yesterday I worked on my daughter's jeans (third time for this - I am now to the point of patching patches, but they are still going strong), a pocket area rip in my husband's suit pants, the hem on a bathmat I can't bear to part with, some socks with cats on them, some reusable grocery bags that just had little rips that I didn't want to see get bigger, and my old brown backpack that I bought in 1979 when I gave up my car and decided to carry everything myself.

The backpack used to have a label that said "Dolt" on it, which I thought was funny. Nice archaic word that as a teacher I thought I should endeavor to transcend, as in "I may be a dolt but I work hard to overcome it." With the hidden message, "and you can, too." And we are all dolts at some things. The backpack became the picnic basket, toy holder and diaper bag when the kids were young. It went on many adventures. And now, with its newly repaired seam and some trimming where the fiber was unraveling inside the bag, it is ready for more. Maybe a farewell visit to Tai Shan, the born in DC Zoo panda who is now 4 and who has to return to China soon.

Mending things is something I've done all my life. Now it seems either quaint (who knows how to hand sew now?) or incredibly hip (the green alternative to buying new stuff.) It can lead to a basement full of things to be repaired, but it can also reinforce the "use it up, wear it out, make do or do without" attitude, which requires a lot of "make do" to be successful.

Having had enough money to have some flexible funds for playing (buying yarn, music equipment, lunches out) I am now in the position of having to be more conservative with my spending. I don't anticipate it being difficult since I've lived on very little at various times in my life, and I'm confident that I can do it again. But being able to mend things should help the process. How wonderful to have the time to do it!

Of course, I am also mending myself. With age, you have to do more maintenance that you do when you are young. And working in a highly stressful environment, especially the last 3 1/2 years, was taking its toll. It made sense to stay working long enough to retire, but there were costs. The good news is that I am sleeping better than I have in years, and some other annoying health things are getting attention and improving.

If I apply "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" to myself, I guess I am working on the first three objectives. I want to use up every last bit of life experience that I can. When I am worn out, I will make do (for more experience, and hopefully more learning in the process). And when the time comes, I will let go of this life and "do without". I am not going to surrender to inertia and start dying while I am still alive. But anyone who knows me can tell you that - I'm pretty engaged in whatever comes along.

Right now, I am mending.

Mending

Cold outside, beautiful light streaming in the windows onto my bead table/sewing table. It's a lovely old thing with a wooden top and cast iron legs. It used to be a two person desk in a schoolroom. It has old carved and written words on it, and glue I've spilled on it, and my grandmother's pincushion, and a complicated mess of beads and potential projects and needles for almost any kind of beading or sewing project you can think of. Yesterday I sat down in this lovely spot to work on some mending.

Mending is very satisfying work for me. You take something that is basically good that needs some small (or large) repair and make it usable again. Yesterday I worked on my daughter's jeans (third time for this - I am now to the point of patching patches, but they are still going strong), a pocket area rip in my husband's suit pants, the hem on a bathmat I can't bear to part with, some socks with cats on them, some reusable grocery bags that just had little rips that I didn't want to see get bigger, and my old brown backpack that I bought in 1979 when I gave up my car and decided to carry everything myself.

The backpack used to have a label that said "Dolt" on it, which I thought was funny. Nice archaic word that as a teacher I thought I should endeavor to transcend, as in "I may be a dolt but I work hard to overcome it." With the hidden message, "and you can, too." And we are all dolts at some things. The backpack became the picnic basket, toy holder and diaper bag when the kids were young. It went on many adventures. And now, with its newly repaired seam and some trimming where the fiber was unraveling inside the bag, it is ready for more. Maybe a farewell visit to Tai Shan, the born in DC Zoo panda who is now 4 and who has to return to China soon.

Mending things is something I've done all my life. Now it seems either quaint (who knows how to hand sew now?) or incredibly hip (the green alternative to buying new stuff.) It can lead to a basement full of things to be repaired, but it can also reinforce the "use it up, wear it out, make do or do without" attitude, which requires a lot of "make do" to be successful.

Having had enough money to have some flexible funds for playing (buying yarn, music equipment, lunches out) I am now in the position of having to be more conservative with my spending. I don't anticipate it being difficult since I've lived on very little at various times in my life, and I'm confident that I can do it again. But being able to mend things should help the process. How wonderful to have the time to do it!

Of course, I am also mending myself. With age, you have to do more maintenance that you do when you are young. And working in a highly stressful environment, especially the last 3 1/2 years, was taking its toll. It made sense to stay working long enough to retire, but there were costs. The good news is that I am sleeping better than I have in years, and some other annoying health things are getting attention and improving.

If I apply "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without" to myself, I guess I am working on the first three objectives. I want to use up every last bit of life experience that I can. When I am worn out, I will make do (for more experience, and hopefully more learning in the process). And when the time comes, I will let go of this life and "do without". I am not going to surrender to inertia and start dying while I am still alive. But anyone who knows me can tell you that - I'm pretty engaged in whatever comes along.

Right now, I am mending.