Phew!!

Ah ha! I found the motivational key to my mending dilemma. The combination of public accountability and human interest did the trick. Here's the repair, done:Once I started, it was a case of tackling the problem step by step. First weave in the broken ends. Then thread the needle with the repair thread and join it into the work near the holes. I've copied the treble stitches by making a double strand of yarn and working a couple of half hitches over each one. Then I've woven in the repair thread. That's the technical detail. The human detail is that I picked up the phone and chatted with my friend D while I did the job. That gave me an instant reinforcement on why I was being so crazy as to try to fix such a fiddly thing!

Repair Operation

Here's the pair of fingerless mittens which arrived in the mail this week. I made them for my friend D a year or few ago. The challenge is to mend the small area where the moths have eaten away some of the fibre. You can just see it on the left--slap bang in the centre of the back where a repair will be most obvious. Darn!The fabric isn't all gone, but there's a weak area about the size of a ten cent piece and a few loose threads sticking out. This is going to be a case of creative reconstruction. I can't think of a way to actually replicate the crochet stitches. Thankfully there is a bit more of the exact same yarn available for me to work with, so colour matching isn't a problem. I'm not looking forward to this task, but it's not going to get any easier by delaying it, so I'm about to sign off here and just have a go.