Here's that little shoulder patch after it's gone through the washer (and dryer...pajama sweaters do not generally get air dried folks). Take a look at the difference between freshly mended and after several washes. I actually like it much more now that the yarn has plumped up and fuzzed out a bit, so I am super happy with this. But it is a beautiful example of...wait for it...why swatching and blocking are so damn important. Bear with me here. Swatching is to let you know how your fabric is going to behave before you go to the trouble of knitting [...]

It's cool enough to reach for a sweater, and around here, that means this ancient, lovely thing.  It also means patching up the latest round of holes (seriously, the fabric is thinner than a tshirt, it gets tiny holes if you so much as look at it). Luckily, that's something I rather enjoy. If you peruse the embroidery tag on here, you'll see many of the previous mends.  (This is the bit where I preemptively mention that I can't show you the whole thing at once because the mends are all over and there is no way to take a [...]

And with that, I'm calling this patch of stitching done. The first bit of stitching was in a previous post, the middle bit is below.  If you want to watch the progression of stitches on these, you can check out the embroidery tag on here and scroll backwards. Now, it's all but certain I will get/find another hole in this some time soon.  And I've given in and bought spare of all the colors I used stitching this so I can keep repairing it as I run out of thread (it's just DMC embroidery floss, which you can find for [...]

Yes, yes the cardigan is back.  Remember it, the one I've been stitching on for, um, two years now on and off (scroll down)?  Yeah, it's back. The fact that this gets so many holes is proof either that I'm too rough on my clothes, that it was too delicate to begin with, or that I wear it all the time and therefore just beat up on it a lot.  Possibly all three.  But at this point, I'm not sad to see the holes, so I don't really see a problem.

And here's the third patch for this go round. This one was another hole at the edge of the pocket (and a good reminder that if I ever knit a sweater, I should maybe do something to reinforce the corners of the pockets from the get go). And that's probably the end.  Probably.  I need to give the whole thing one more check to see if there are any other spots that need attention before it goes back in the closet!

So remember that sweater? The one that I spent far too much time mending already (scroll down...you'll see it)?  Yeah...yeah so it's due for another round.  It's got a few holes (I wear it all the time, I climb on rocks and through prickly things more than I should, and I have kittens...holes are a given).  I've  got some thread, and I clearly have an excess of free time. I should probably just find another pajama sweater...I've had this one since at least 2014 and I've worn it more than just about anything else in my closet. But I love [...]

I'm calling this little patch of stitching done! That's the one I just did now, and just for reminders, here are the ones I did back in November. That's the one on the cuff. And that's the one on the front near the pocket. And here's the one on the back up by the shoulder. And here's where I'm super mean and say no, I can't really take a picture that shows them to you all at once (several people asked last time).  That's because they're all over the place on the sweater, and you can't actually see them all [...]

Remember back in November when I had some holes in an old sweater? And I hated the idea of shopping so much that I decided to embroider over the things instead of buying a new sweater (you can follow along on the whole adventure over here if you're so inclined, scroll down...). Yeah, well the sweater got another hole (kittens...blame kittens).  But once you're that invested in fixing something, you're not going to let it go for one more little hole.  You're going to grab the same batch of threads you used last time and stitch on it some more. [...]

So let's see where we ended up.  First the sleeve. Then the shoulder. Then the front. I love it.  Totally couldn't be happier.  I'm actually considering doing this in a few other spots on the sweater where there are no holes just for the fun of it because I don't want to be done yet. And for folks asking or wondering, no it's really not hard.  You can find embroidery floss at most any craft store.  The only other things you need are a needle (I like the blunt ones, but some people like pointy ones...experiment and see what you [...]