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I made the mistake of changing the sheets on my bed on Monday.
After the usual frustrating visit to the linen cupboard to attempt to distinguish between the supply of double sheets, single sheets, sheet sleeping bags and the occasional cot sheet (all folded and stacked up together and distinguishable only by weight... fine, apart from the fact that some are linen, some are cotton, some are polycotton and some are quasi-towelling and therefore sheets of the same dimensions have totally different mass and bulk!) I attempted to re-make my bed and was alarmed by the clouds of arising dust.
Since it was a nice sunny morning I thought it was high time I took my blankets outside and beat them over the washing-line. Given five woollen blankets of varying vintage this was both an energetic and a lengthy exercise, especially as I am not tall enough to hold a blanket off the ground without external support, even one folded in half!
Feathers, dust and doubtless dust-mites duly flew as I engaged in a full aerobic workout, pummelling and whip-snapping the blankets mercilessly. Unfortunately the sunshine behind the fabric revealed all too plainly that the more elderly of the blankets were in sore need of darning — they had probably only been held together by dust in the first place.
So the next task was to pile up all five layers of my winter bedding into a giant mending-pile, dig out all the assorted communal mending wool I could lay my hands on and set to making a 'stitch in time' before my antique woollens disintegrated in a rather more terminal fashion. (Plenty of small holes; as yet, no big ones. And it doesn't look like moth — just thin spots and old age. Given that one of the blankets is stamped L.C.C. (London County Council, abolished 1965 — and it was already second-hand before it ever entered these doors) and that two others still bear their official price-controlled labels declaring that they must not be sold at a price above 33/- they are probably fifty years old or more, thus demonstrating the lifespan to be expected of heavy-duty wool.)
I am quite proud of my workmanlike flat darns, a skill I only acquired during the past year, and which in a woven fabric this coarse really are invisible (assuming that one manages to match the wool accurately, which I couldn't on all cases). However, I soon discovered that there were far more holes than I had realised, and that an average-sized hole took me about fifteen minutes to darn, replacing every broken thread and anchoring the rows firmly into sound cloth.
I knew all too well that once I had made the bed up again I would never get round to stripping all the blankets off in order to fix a few holes in the underlying layers, so it was a question of how much I could finish before I simply had to go to bed....
It took me hours and hours to deal with the first two — not to cover all the thin places, but simply to patch the actual holes. But miraculously the final three blankets were almost perfect in comparison (and probably twenty years younger!) so the task began to look potentially manageable; I had intended to give up at one a.m., but when it was a question of only a couple of small holes rather than of dozens, I suddenly recovered my motivation.
At a few minutes past two a.m. I finally tucked in the last blanket. It had been the first on the mending heap and hence bottom of the darned pile when making up the bed... and thus also happened to be one of the most ragged. As I was turning back the sheet, two new large holes right at the top of the blanket suddenly presented themselves to my appalled eyes...
Well, you can't see them, as the sheet is folded back over that section. And they are at least in a relatively accessible situation; I tell myself that I may get round to mending them in a one-off effort one of these days.
Meanwhile, is the bedding any warmer — minus its holes?
Of course not!
But I feel that I have done my little bit towards preserving our national heritage... it seems a pity to let such ancient artifacts decay by default, even if they are only blankets on my bed...
After the usual frustrating visit to the linen cupboard to attempt to distinguish between the supply of double sheets, single sheets, sheet sleeping bags and the occasional cot sheet (all folded and stacked up together and distinguishable only by weight... fine, apart from the fact that some are linen, some are cotton, some are polycotton and some are quasi-towelling and therefore sheets of the same dimensions have totally different mass and bulk!) I attempted to re-make my bed and was alarmed by the clouds of arising dust.
Since it was a nice sunny morning I thought it was high time I took my blankets outside and beat them over the washing-line. Given five woollen blankets of varying vintage this was both an energetic and a lengthy exercise, especially as I am not tall enough to hold a blanket off the ground without external support, even one folded in half!
Feathers, dust and doubtless dust-mites duly flew as I engaged in a full aerobic workout, pummelling and whip-snapping the blankets mercilessly. Unfortunately the sunshine behind the fabric revealed all too plainly that the more elderly of the blankets were in sore need of darning — they had probably only been held together by dust in the first place.
So the next task was to pile up all five layers of my winter bedding into a giant mending-pile, dig out all the assorted communal mending wool I could lay my hands on and set to making a 'stitch in time' before my antique woollens disintegrated in a rather more terminal fashion. (Plenty of small holes; as yet, no big ones. And it doesn't look like moth — just thin spots and old age. Given that one of the blankets is stamped L.C.C. (London County Council, abolished 1965 — and it was already second-hand before it ever entered these doors) and that two others still bear their official price-controlled labels declaring that they must not be sold at a price above 33/- they are probably fifty years old or more, thus demonstrating the lifespan to be expected of heavy-duty wool.)
I am quite proud of my workmanlike flat darns, a skill I only acquired during the past year, and which in a woven fabric this coarse really are invisible (assuming that one manages to match the wool accurately, which I couldn't on all cases). However, I soon discovered that there were far more holes than I had realised, and that an average-sized hole took me about fifteen minutes to darn, replacing every broken thread and anchoring the rows firmly into sound cloth.
I knew all too well that once I had made the bed up again I would never get round to stripping all the blankets off in order to fix a few holes in the underlying layers, so it was a question of how much I could finish before I simply had to go to bed....
It took me hours and hours to deal with the first two — not to cover all the thin places, but simply to patch the actual holes. But miraculously the final three blankets were almost perfect in comparison (and probably twenty years younger!) so the task began to look potentially manageable; I had intended to give up at one a.m., but when it was a question of only a couple of small holes rather than of dozens, I suddenly recovered my motivation.
At a few minutes past two a.m. I finally tucked in the last blanket. It had been the first on the mending heap and hence bottom of the darned pile when making up the bed... and thus also happened to be one of the most ragged. As I was turning back the sheet, two new large holes right at the top of the blanket suddenly presented themselves to my appalled eyes...
Well, you can't see them, as the sheet is folded back over that section. And they are at least in a relatively accessible situation; I tell myself that I may get round to mending them in a one-off effort one of these days.
Meanwhile, is the bedding any warmer — minus its holes?
Of course not!
But I feel that I have done my little bit towards preserving our national heritage... it seems a pity to let such ancient artifacts decay by default, even if they are only blankets on my bed...
