Darn it!

darned!
Originally uploaded by gershamabob

We had a good old fashioned winter snow storm Friday night and on Saturday. I very much wanted to go out because I knew an old friend I hadn't seen for a long time would be there. But I fretted about the weather and the driving conditions. I did go to the party and to my surprise the line of snow that had blanketed the area where I live and north of us, seemed to end abruptly just a few miles down the road. I didn't bring any contribution to the party, wanting to make a beeline to it. That faux pas was noticed. My guilty feelings seem well worth it for seeing my old friend.

Old friends are a great benefit of becoming older. My friend is thinking of creating a new business. I always love a new opportunity to brainstorm and I think I've got some interesting things to say about the business. I also know that my tendency to think aloud can drive people nuts. So it's a good thing to have some history with this friend. He knows how I can pelt out ideas, and it's encouraging to me that I believe he knows that what I say not always a haphazard jumble.

The party ended at a reasonable hour and I returned home without incident. I stoked my fire and the house wasn't as uncomfortably cold as it often is. I felt wide awake and put on some music. There was a basket of laundry the needed to be folded. I quickly discovered that many of the items of clothing in the basket were in need of some repair. Even before that I knew the gloves I'd worn in the evening had a few holes in need of darning.

My needle skills are quite limited. Even such as they are I find them handy. My body is remarkably average and the good part of that is there often are lots of good clothes cheap that will fit me. The slightly awkward part is that cheap pants in my waist size are often too long in the inseam.Something I can do moderately well is to do a blind hem stitch to adjust the pants length. I'm not really into laying out money right now even for cheap clothing, so that means it's worth my while to repair some of the clothing I own. I'm wearing a sweater now that's been darned in several places. I didn't even match the thread color too well when I did it, but once the sweater is on me, it seem it would take an eagle eye to notice the repairs.

I looked online for some information about darning. It's one of those things that easy enough that even I can do it, but for some reason people seem afraid to try. gershamabob's perfectly illustrates a good darning job done. Pat Oehler at der Erste Zug made a great page about how to darn a sock. The School for Advanced Research (SAR)also has a page on mending. I was happy to find out about SAR because I'd never heard of the place. Their site, Pueblo Indian Embroidery is quite interesting. It doesn't have much to do with repairing cloth, rather having to do with passing along culture.

Repairing cloth is something people all over have done through the ages. It seems to me that lately in the USA most people have come to scorn repairs and preferring much the new as perfect. Yet there is something quite pleasing about making repairs, perhaps we could come to think of wearing clothes made more perfect by repair.