I had the honour of mending one of Eric’s sweaters. His style is definitely more subdued than mine, so there was no doubt that I would aim for a discreet mend. Then I found a near-perfect yarn to match the sweater, and while the result is not invisible, it blends in pretty darn well. I guess if I had endless time and infinite patience, I could have done something even less visible with Swiss darning, but with these tiny stitches? No thank you.

It’s tricky when the yarn thickness doesn’t quite match. Taken singly, the yarn was too thin. Held double, it was thicker than the original, so I made my grid at half the density of the original stitches. Which afterwards turned out to be a bit too sparse, making the result look like a basket rather than an even weave. You can see it in the photo below, on the left side of the mend, if you look really carefully. I went back and wove in more vertical threads between the existing ones here and there – I’m about halfway done in the photo, starting from the right. Inserting extra warp threads was more work than if I’d had them there from the start. But I don’t know how I could have gotten the density right without experimenting.

There’s almost more patch than original material in these cardigan sleeves.

This cardigan is going on to its third or fourth life. We got it from my sister-in-law when her kids outgrew it. Neither Ingrid nor Adrian were too fond of knitted cardigans, so we passed it on to a friend. Now it came back, far outgrown again, and unfortunately with a moth-eaten hole on one side.

I like colourful mends, but sometimes a discreet approach works better. I’ve been watching Instagram reels about mending knitwear and learned how to basically recreate the knit fabric. Now I got to try it out for real. It starts out as duplicate stitch around the edges of the hole, where the original material is still whole, and then just continues out into the nothingness with pins for temporary support. The gray wool I had at home was a near-perfect match so the end result is almost indistinguishable from the original fabric (although just a bit thicker, so you can feel it more than you can see it).

Now the cardigan can be passed along to the next baby cousin.

I forgot to take a “before” picture so here’s one from mid-mend and one of the finished result.

I’m taking a break from this towel for now. The darning has been meditative and soothing but the holes are all mended now and it’s time to switch to some other project. It’ll be interesting to see what it feels like in use. The darns are stiffer than the rest of it, naturally, but I’m hoping they will soften with washing and using.

Finally I am done with the cardigan and it’s wearable again.

I was expecting two days of work but even working until my eyes got tired and difficult to focus, it took me 4 days to finish it. Never again.

The stiff tape makes all the horizontal edges flare just a little bit. Not too much around the neckline, luckily, and around the hips I think it might actually look good in a way.

The rounded corners were super hard. I figured out after the first one that clips worked better than pins, but it was still difficult to get the curves to curve. I didn’t quite succeed, and they all look a bit uneven. I don’t think it will be noticeable from a distance, though. I’m not going to redo it all in any case.

And of course Nysse had to lie down on it when I was done. He doesn’t even always lay long enough on my projects to go to sleep – sometimes only a few minutes. I don’t know if he just wants to try them out and see how comfy they are, or if he’s marking them as his territory or something.

I generally enjoy mending clothing. Some mending projects are creative, some are meditative, some quick and simple because I just want to get my favourite socks back into rotation.

And then there is this one. I’ve been procrastinating about it for at least a year because I just know it’s going to take forever and not be any fun.

This is a cashmere cardigan from a Hong Kong-based clothing brand. I was going to say it’s a favourite cardigan of mine but really by now I pretty much only have favourite cardigans. It’s the first and pretty much only high-end fashion item I ever bought, way back in London, and was the most expensive piece of clothing I owned for a long time. Taking inflation into account, it still might be. I just loved it from the moment I laid my eyes on it.

I’ve patched the elbows and redone the cuffs already but now the bias tape facing is completely worn through, to the point where it looks so shabby and tatty that I can’t wear it among people.

I have more of the silk fabric I used for the cuff facing. And now I’m on vacation and I have the time. So it’s time to get it done.

The problem with the silk I have is that it’s stiff, and expensive. The normal kind of material to use for facing is bias tape, cut on the diagonal, which makes it easier to shape around curves. But buying enough of the silk to cut bias tape from it would be horrendously expensive, so I have to just use normal horizontal strips. Which are being the opposite of supple and flexible here. Stiff as a stick.

And it’s so many tiny stitches. Two and a half metres, I measured the whole facing to. It’s going to take forever.

I’d be willing to throw it out and buy a new one if I could, but they don’t even make this model any more, or anything close to it, so even that isn’t an option. Just grit my teeth and get it done.

The darning here is basically rebuilding the towel, and from a practical point of view it’s probably not worth the effort, but it’s very meditative work.

I’m making progress on darning the linen kitchen towel. I can only work on it during daylight hours (which I had today, because I worked from home and it is summer so it’s full daylight still at five in the afternoon) and even then it’s a task that definitely requires glasses.

Putting on glasses is still weird. I feel like I see well without them, and then putting them on suddenly makes everything almost insanely crisp and sharp. Like a camera in HDR mode, almost unreal.

I’m adding my own mends to the heirloom towel. This one will be more weaving than mending, because I hadn’t paid attention to it and didn’t see it was quite so worn. But unlike the dense fabric in the modern towels, this one is actually easy to work with. The coarser thread is much easier on the eyes.

My hand-knitted socks are getting their first holes, with the oldest and favouritest ones going first. I saw a hole in one, which led me to check a few of the other pairs and find three or four more. All under the big toe.

For most of them I have some leftover yarn, so I can achieve some very discreet mends – which is nice when I want to wear these to work.