Igenlode Wordsmith

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...

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... )

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( Broken iron )


( Pyjamas )

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.)

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.

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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.

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...