Tag Archives: mending

Better late than never

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This is one of my favorite/least favorite genre of project. It’s one of those tasks that I know I should get done right away, because if I don’t do it right off the bat, then it’ll sit in my “to be mended” pile for months.

And that’s exactly what happened.

At the beginning of Fall, my big kid was wearing their favorite stripey sweater. It’s a cute, scrappy project that I made for them about a year ago. It’s getting a little “well loved” but still has plenty of life in it.

Anyway, I was sitting, chatting with them, and they were wearing the sweater inside-out (because that’s something that 4-year-olds do, I guess). They noticed the ends poking out of the sweater, and since it was a “use up all the scraps” project, there are quite a few ends. Before I could say anything, they grabbed one end, said “What’s this?” and yanked with all their might.

Sigh.

It doesn’t look that bad from the outside, but it’s turned into a weird, 4-inch-long lump. (It’s the blue stripe right at the top of the red section… It kind of pulls in and makes the blue disappear).

But if you look to the inside… it’s pretty obvious that something’s wrong.

So, I thew the sweater in my knitting/mending pile and figured I’d fix it when I had the time.

Long story short… that was probably 3 months ago, and I’m not even sure if the sweater still fits the kid.

Anyway, in a fit of productivity this afternoon, I sat down for 10 minutes (with the kids crawling all over me, so I probably could have gotten it done in 5, had I been alone) and fixed the whole dang thing. I used a big needle to unpick all the super-tight stitches and redistribute the yarn. Simple.

The sweater is good as new! (I mean, not new. There are plenty of stains and the elbows are a little threadbare. But still.)

Why are the simplest tasks sometimes the hardest to finish?

Big Mending

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I guess I’m on a mending streak here. My dad was in town a few weeks ago, and he brought his favorite sweater with him. (Hi Dad!) Halfway through the visit he showed me the elbows on his sweater, and they were… disreputable. But, that’s what happens when you wear a sweater every day for years. (Even if you put leather elbow patches on it.)

Elbow 1- Bad.

Elbow 2- Very bad.

He asked me if it was fixable, and I said yes, of course! But after a little investigating I realized that even if I was very careful, the holes/runs were so big that no matter what I did, wouldn’t be invisible. But Dad said that he didn’t mind, and in fact, he asked me to use bright red yarn to fix it! I love a little bit of visible mending, so I got to work.

I used a crochet hook to fix the bigger runs (again, not perfectly- the sweater was commercially made, so I didn’t have the ability to completely match the knitted pattern), then brought in the red yarn.

I picked up stitches along the bottom edge of the holes, and started working back and forth in stockinette stitch. Every RS row, I picked up a stitch from the sweater at the beginning and end of the row (and sometimes in the middle, too), and worked a K2tog with the red and the gray yarns.

The K2togs allowed me to attach the patches as I was knitting them, so there wasn’t any sewing! And, as a bonus, it let me increase and decrease the size of the patches to pretty precisely cover the thin parts of the sweater.

Is it perfect? Not exactly. But I do love the cozy charm of a well-worn and well-patched sweater. And Dad will (hopefully!) get to keep wearing his sweater for years to come.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve mended?

When it rains

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You guys, we must be having bad luck lately. Or maybe a mouse, or worse yet, moths. *Shudder.* Now my husband has a hole right in the middle of his sweater!

(I don’t really think we have mice or moths… I think we just have two very active children and we’re always hauling them (and their stuff) all over the place, so we’re not as gentle on our things as maybe we should be.)

If I didn’t know better, I’d say this sweater got snipped by scissors. It’s not in a thinned-out patch, it’s just right on the belly. And there’s no obvious pull in the knitting, so I don’t think it got caught on a loose nail or anything. It’s a mystery!

But, luckily for me, that makes it pretty easy to fix, especially because I found some almost-identical garnet-red yarn in my stash. It’s not the original yarn (that’s long gone), but it’s close enough to not matter.

A little duplicate stitch and voila! Picture perfect. (It’s even less noticeable in person!)

Fingers crossed that this mend actually works.

What have you mended lately?

A little more mending

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You know how I was so proud of the visible mending I did the other day on my favorite sweater?

I was totally patting myself on the back, pleased with how well it turned out and how much I liked the little red patch. I even was thinking that I should add some decorative bits of visible mending on parts of the sweater that don’t strictly need mending yet. You know, for aesthetic reasons.

Well, in a real Icarus moment, I went to further admire my handiwork yesterday, and I realized that… I hadn’t actually fixed the cuff. It turns out that I had only patched up part of the thinned-out section. Sigh.

Oh well, I guess it’s an opportunity for me to get a little more color introduced to the sweater, albeit not for “aesthetic” reasons. Ah well.

I picked up the dropped stitches with a little sapphire-blue wool, reinforced the cuff edge with some fairly random stitches and then locked the whole thing down with a little blanket stitch.

It’s not as tidy as the red patch was, but I was pressed for time and this should hold well enough. Fingers crossed that I’ve got all the loose ends this time around. But, if I don’t, well, then I guess I’ll just keep adding colors.

Have you ever had to go back and re-mend something right after you thought you fixed it?

A little mending

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Just a quick little project today, and it’s one of those one that I’ve been meaning to do for… a year?

This is my favorite winter sweater. It’s super cozy wool that’s been worn in just the right amount so it’s not too scratchy. I love the cables, and the fit is perfect. The sleeves are just the right length. You get it. It’s the holy grail of sweaters (in my opinion, anyway).

But the problem with having a favorite sweater is that you wear it all the time, and eventually, it starts to fall apart a bit. Which is exactly what happened here. I must have caught my cuff on something, because it’s started to slowly unravel just a bit. I fully intended to fix it when I put it away for the winter, but, clearly that didn’t happen.

It’s also been several years since I knit up this sweater, so I have no idea where the matching yarn could be (assuming there was even any leftover). So, we’re going with visible mending. I pulled out some bright red yarn, knit up a little square and got to work.

I folded it over the edge of the cuff, covering both sides of the pull, after making sure that the “active stitches” were held in place by a stitch or two. I carefully sewed around the patch, and it’s good as new! Well, maybe not new, but it’s got plenty more life in it now.

What’s the last thing you mended?

Speeeeeedweve

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You guys, I’ve got a new tool, and I love it!

It’s a Speedweve-style darning loom, and it’s just the coolest. I’ll be honest, I found out about this from an ad on Instagram, so you know, not the most high-brow place to learn about new tools. But, regardless of where I found it, I’m excited to have it, use it, and tell you about it!

First off, here’s the little loom. It fits really nicely in my hand, and has two parts. A lovely, smooth wooden disk that goes inside the sock (or whatever garment you’re darning), and a hefty metal piece that goes on the outside. They’re held together with rubber bands.

My favorite part is flipping the little hooks back and forth. It’s just so satisfying! In fact, it’s so satisfying, I taught myself how to make an animation, so you can experience it yourself:

Lucky for me, I’ve got about a million socks on the verge of falling apart, so I’ve got lots of darning ahead of me. This is one of my less-embarrassing socks:

So, I slip the wooden disk into the sock, and arrange it under the bare patch, hook up the metal part of the loom and lock it in place with rubber bands.

Then I get a nice long piece of sock yarn and start warping the loom. You make tiny stitches at the bottom of the area to be patched, and loop the thread around the loops.

Then it’s just a matter of weaving through the warps. Flipping the hooks back and forth lets you lift/lower the threads of the warp, which makes for faster weaving. And, at the end of each row, you make a tiny stitch into the sock, fastening the patch in place as you weave it.

After that, I take off the loom, sew the top warp loops in place with the whip stitch, and I’m on my way. I ended up making four different patches to cover all the thin spots on this sock- truly living my Oliver Twist Fantasy. (And like I said, these are some of my least disreputable… I really have to start up sock knitting again.)

Do you darn your socks? Do you have any fun new tools?

Mending

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I feel like I’ve been on a streak lately, where everything I pull out of storage is full of holes.  I found two sweaters, a tea cozy and a hat that needed repair, and I just tried on my most favorite pair of socks, and my toe went right through the tip.

Fair warning:  The following are photos of an *ahem* well-loved sock.  Not exactly the pretty things you might be looking for in a knitting blog.  You have been warned.

Anyway, the toe:

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You can see that these socks have already received some TLC- I patched up a big bare spot on the ball of the foot last winter.  Now the toe’s busted through and the heel is about to go.  Some might give up on so worn-out a pair of socks, but not me!  I worked dang hard on these bad boys, and I want to wear them!

It’s time for my favorite knitting mending technique- the duplicate stitch. (This tutorial is more about using the duplicate stitch for decorative use, but it’s the same idea if you want to use it for repair.)

Whenever I want to darn a piece of worn-out knitting (usually socks), I use duplicate stitch, carefully going over the worn-out spot (plus a little extra all the way around).  It’s a way to reinforce worn stitches with a new layer of wool.  I carefully trace the knit stitches with the new yarn, following the path of the last few fibers of the old yarn.

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And when there’s a real, honest-to-goodness hole, where the yarn has fully broken and there’s nothing left to “trace”, I use a knitting needle to hold my stitches until I can hook them up to the other side of the hole, building new “knitted” fabric to cover the space.

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Until, the hole is covered and the sock is good as new.  Well, you know what I mean.

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Now I just have to repeat with all the other sad socks in my drawer.

Do you ever mend your knitting?

Moths, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Actually Fix My Husband’s Stocking

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Buckle in, everyone.  It’s going to be a long one.  A tale of mystery! Suspense! Moths!

Several years ago, I knit up two lovely stockings for myself and my husband.  They were fabulous, squishy, Cascade 220 in carefully-selected  shades of evergreen, holly berry and cream.  Perfect Christmas colors.  The stockings were covered in Fair Isle color work from the cuff to the toe, and I even charted out and knit our names into the tops.  They were lovely and festive.

They looked like this (although it looks like they need to be re-blocked):

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Last year, we were decorating the house, and I pulled out the stockings.  And horror of horrors– a silver-dollar-sized hole right in the top of my husband’s stocking.

I freaked out!  My heart pounded, and I felt sick to my stomach.  How could this happen? What was I supposed to do?  I had worked so hard on those stockings!  Now some bug had come along and ripped a gigantic hole right in the middle of his name!

I’ll admit- what happened next was not one of my smartest moments.  But I panicked.

And cut the whole top off the stocking.

Just pulled out my big ol’ shears and cut off all the disgusting bug-residue, and threw it away.  For a few minutes, I felt better- the offending area was now gone and it couldn’t infect the rest of the stocking (because in my mind, that’s how moths worked.  Like I said, not my smartest moment).

But my good mood was short lived.  Because the moment I threw away the top of the stocking, I looked at what I had left.  It was not good.

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Hoo boy.

I took a few calming breaths and realized that whatever I needed to do next, I had to get more yarn- after all, I had cut off a good 4 inches, and needed to get that knitting back, one way or another.   I hopped in the car and drove to my favorite yarn shop with the sad, half-dead stocking and picked out the appropriate colors (and thank god they hadn’t been discontinued!).  This was literally a year ago.   (OK- a year and two days.)

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Yarn in hand, half-dead stocking in my knitting bag, did I run home to pick up my needles and go to work?

No.  I panicked some more and hid the project away in my knitting room.

And then forgot about it.

All year.

Whoops.

I pulled out the Christmas stuff this year, and when I saw my lone intact stocking in the box of decorations, it all came flooding back to me- the hole, the scissors, the bad decisions.

But, it’s still early(ish) in December, and I’ve mostly finished my Christmas knitting, so I sat down, determined to finally fix the stocking.

First, I considered picking up stitches from the cut-off edge, and knitting up.  But, on second thought, I realized that knitting from the other direction would throw off the Fair Isle pattern I had worked on so carefully.  I had to knit from the top down, like before, then graft the new cuff to the old stocking.

Using the intact stocking as a template, and re-charting the name panel, I worked up the cuff in an afternoon.  It looked good.  It looked like it was going to work.  I just had to figure out how to attach it.

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I examined the remains of the original stocking carefully.  I didn’t want to have to graft the top into a row of color work (I am insane, but not that insane).  Luckily, there was a solid row of green right before the snowflake panel, so that was where I decided to make my move.

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I carefully lined up the top with the rest of the stocking, and started grafting the live stitches onto the old stocking.

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It went slowly, but soon enough i had made it all the way around the cuff!  I did a little happy dance and let out a sigh of relief.

But that relief was short-lived, because now there was a weird giant crease all the way around the cuff where I had just finished grafting.

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That picture looks like I’ve just folded the knitting for dramatic effect, but I swear that was how it was laying.

Upon further inspection I realized that since I had grafted a few rows down from where I had cut the stocking in that fit of insect-inspired rage, there was now a big ridge of unwanted knitting inside my stocking.

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There was only one thing to do.  Unravel it.  (And cross my fingers that I hadn’t made a mistake in my grafting.)

I picked and pulled and before long, the ridge was gone.

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I wove in the remaining ends, and held my breath as I turned the stocking inside-out.

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And it was good as new!  A Christmas Miracle!

The stockings are now hung by the chimney with care, and I will be sure to store them in a moth-proof container this year.

Have you ever had to do major reconstructive surgery on a knit item?  How did it go?