This week, I caught a Fruity Knitting podcast that got me inspired to do some mending. Their guest was Flora Collingwood-Norris, of Collingwood-Norris Design.
The sweaters and scarves and all were nice, but the bit that I found really exciting was her visible mending work. Got me motivated to do a little darning of my own!
So I dug around in my closet and found a vintage, thrift store sweater that I’d been holding onto, despite the elbows having worn thin.
It’s mint green, brushed wool and mohair- I’m thinking maybe 1970’s? Super light and very warm, on account of the super fuzzy texture.
But the elbows were giving out, so I haven’t worn it in quite a while
Poor fuzz-less elbows, but a stitch in the center there ready to give way!
Since there were still stitches there to reinforce, I decided to use Swiss Darning (duplicate stitch) to reinforce the area. And for the darning yarn, I chose something suitably flashy
I decided to not really define the borders, but just start stitching and work as far in each direction as seemed necessary to address the weakness.
So the shapes kind of just grew and followed the wear patterns. And here is the result
It didn’t take terribly long, and now the sweater is ready to go back into service!
Next I want to try a woven darn. Seems like it would be a handy skill to have. I might try to get ahold of one of these neat little tools- SpeedWeve
In other wool news, I’ve been handcarding Felix wool in the evenings, and now have a small mountain of rolags to spin up!
Felix wool likes to be spun fine, so aiming for between a 90-100 yds per oz two-ply for this yarn- a beautiful blank canvas for summertime dyeing 🙂
How very cool! On my list for February was to tackle a large basket of mending that I need to do. The puppy has interfered with my plans so far though.
yeah, puppies have a way of disrupting plans. it’s lucky for them they are so stinkin’ cute! 🙂
That’s just awesome! There seems to be a trend towards mending again which is a wonderful thing because some of us have never stopped. It certainly makes things last longer and save some coins plus it’s just downright fun. I received a copy of my taproot magazine a great little publication a few
months ago . It contained a great article on patching knees and jeans by hand so that’s my new project. And I will certainly put your reference into action the next time I need to mend something knitted either by myself or commercially.
Love the fleece you’re just one busy little bee aren’t you?
thanks Goatldi- yeah, I stay pretty busy. Have you ever use won of those little speedweve-type darning looms? they look so neat. For jeans I’d always just sewn on patches but weaving a little patch in palce is such a cool idea.