Igenlode Wordsmith

Not mending

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 01:48:55 GMT

I now have not one but *two* ridiculously large mending piles... one upstairs and one downstairs :(
Everything from replacing a button to patching a ripped armpit and repairing a placket...

comments

Beyond Repair

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 20:45:37 GMT

I went to put on my cashmere jumper (which has basically had to be darned every single time I have worn it) and discovered that it had acquired a whole new crop of much larger holes up the sleeve which it is obviously quite pointless to repair. Probably moth damage, although there are no tell-tale cocoons, because the holes are just so big compared to the ones which were appearing previously. So I shall have to ditch it, as the arm has basically been perforated off at the shoulder.

( Read more... )

A fairly apocalyptic final episode of "Frozen Planet II" last night, in which the BBC film team demonstrated the scale of the climate damage which is happening *right now*, never mind accelerating into the future. Despite David Attenborough's concluding call to arms of 'We need to do something immediately', the unintended message I took away is that it is basically too late already. ( Read more... )

comments

Burnt bowls

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 13:58:35 GMT

I managed to destroy two plastic bowls in one day while trying to melt a couple of chunks of white chocolate. The first one burnt right through the bottom when I heated the chocolate in the microwave for a couple of minutes on 'defrost' setting (at which point the edge of one chunk had reached boiling-sugar temperature and burnt to charcoal honeycomb, whilst the rest of the chocolate hadn't even softened yet), and the second one had a hole melted through its side when it came into contact with the metal saucepan of boiling water in which I was attempting to melt a replacement portion of chocolate. ( Read more... )

( Broken iron )

( Pyjamas )

comments

Success in neon and sewing

Sat, 11 Jun 2022 01:47:48 GMT

Finally! I got round to putting yet another (the fourth(!)) sleeve patch and darn into the shoulder of my pyjama jacket, and at last I have pyjamas to wear again. (Since I was previously delaying wearing them because they needed to go through the wash, I have been sleeping in my underwear for more than a week -- with hindsight it would have been much better simply to have made the necessary excavations to get my second pair of summer pyjamas out of the bottom of the remaining trunk of seasonal clothing, which I still haven't finished emptying...)
I have, however, been forced to retire not one but two pairs of pants in quick succession, one of them due to damage caused while I was trying to mend it.

And my largest mesembryanthemum popped up an unexpected neon flower this morning, with lots more now visible in bud; after last year's travails, the mesembryanthemums have been almost embarrassingly successful this time round, growing far larger than before and threatening to overspill even their wide shallow tray. The biggest one is now relatively huge.

( basil )

( chillies )

( tomatoes )

comments

Another one bites the dust

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:16:01 GMT

My brown silk shirt, having been repeatedly patched/reinforced in the armpits, has now ripped again down the arm the first time I wore it after mending the previous rip -- I could darn it again with an underlying patch, but I just don't think it's worth it. The garment is obviously worn out. It did manage another two years after the initial patching operation.

The sides-to-middle sheet, on the other hand, has been functioning very nicely once I finally finished all those darns and got the worn edges through the hemmer attachment on my WW1 sewing machine; that's the difference between holes in otherwise sound material and holes caused by cloth wearing too thin to stand up to the normal strains of wear.

(And the reflector has come off the rear wheel of my bicycle, or at least one end of the plastic snapped so that it was hanging loose and banging dangerously. Fortunately wheel reflectors -- as opposed to pedal reflectors -- are not a legal requirement. Unfortunately the gear change is still not working reliably.)

comments

Finished?

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 21:00:15 GMT

Right, I've finished Chapter probably-the-14th-and-last (unless I lost count somewhere or other along the way) of "An Outsider and a Foreigner", on Hertha's forlorn sentiment that she can't possibly tell Raoul how she feels about him. I hope her motivations for this are sufficiently clear; I'm not at all sure that they are. But I couldn't seem to fit the extra explanation in to the prose for the ending (I had enough difficulty steering a way to the ending at all), which means that it's only covered in her dialogue with Christine several pages earlier on, and in a couple of fragmentary sentences at that: "And hurt us both all the more? I don't want his pity. [...] He has the right to be left in peace -- by both of us."

No, I'm really not sure that's enough :-(

I mean, it seems to me painfully obvious that a one-sided confession, especially under these circumstances, is just going to make things exquisitely uncomfortable for both of them and imperil the relationship that they do have -- speaking from bitter experience -- but Hertha doesn't explicitly address that anywhere...

I'm also very much in two minds about whether I'm actually going to write the planned epilogue at this point. ( Read more... )

I've almost completed the sides-to-middle operation on the sheet -- I thought I had, but annoyingly I discovered some more holes near the top edge. They are small rips in otherwise sound fabric, dating back to the era of the rats and caused by climbing up the corner of the bed, and I never bothered with them while they were near the hem of the sheet and always securely tucked in. But turning the worn centre to the outside has unfortunately turned out to result in bringing all those little crescent-shaped tears to the centre of the 'new' sheet, and in a prime location for me to catch a big toe in them and rip the whole thing to shreds :-(

So each one needs a flat darn, taking up to an hour each. ( Read more... )

comments

New acquisitions

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 21:48:27 GMT

I was given a beautiful soft and feather-light grey cashmere jumper for free because it had some moth damage. I very carefully closed up the small holes on the back using a dark grey cotton thread, and it really didn't show. Unfortunately the first time I wore it, when I took it off two new and larger holes appeared in the front due to the strain of being pulled over my head! (Which was precisely why I'd taken care to mend all the visible damage first.)

I've now darned up the holes in the front, which are three or four stitches wide, with a fine cream silk, but the darns are about a quarter of an inch square and very visible. Dark cotton would probably have worked better again...

Oh well, it's still as wearable as it ever was, and very soft and warm -- I wanted it as a under-layer anyway. More holes will probably appear until I locate all the damaged threads.

On the other hand, I scored a replacement 1-litre Thermos to replace my broken yoghurt-making flask, unwanted on the grounds that it was dirty and smelt of curry. The silvering in the interior shows signs of wear, but the plastic parts clean up all right and the Achilles heel of the silicon seal appears to be in good condition. It doesn't need to have perfect insulation, as I only want it to keep the yoghurt warm overnight. It just needs not to leak.

comments