Mending time! But first, before you start mending, a little bit of prep work is in order. Actually, we need to take an even bigger step back. This is probably the very oldest knitting I've ever shown around these parts. These socks are from 2008. You know, back when we were all young and well rested, did not have a failed reality tv personality encouraging a coup, did not have anxiety dreams about leaving of the house without a face mask, and had no idea what instagram was because it hadn't been invented yet. They've been in spouse's sock drawer [...]

So, we had the messy middle part.  We made the patches.  Now it finally starts to look better. After sending the patches through the washer and dryer a few times (because if they're going to shrink, I want them to shrink *before* I sew them on my sweater thank you very much), I pinned them to the sweater.  Then I held the fabric stiff and still with an embroidery hoop and started sewing.  I picked a column of stitches on the edge of the patch and duplicate stitched over every other stitch in the column, then over a random scattering [...]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled elbow patches to talk about the slits on the side of the sweater. I love sweaters with side slits (what can I say, I have a big ass, side slits make for extra ass room).  But I find they tend to get messed up over time).  But...but...this is fixable! The best way I've found to fix it is by blanket stitching around the perimeter of the slit.  Now, if you were a cool kid, you'd do this before it got worn out.  But if you were me, you'd intend to do it before it got [...]

So these are the patches. Nothing fancy, just more or less oval shaped, and a good bit bigger than the worn area on the sweater.⁠ I'm knitting the patches in Ontheround's Everyday DK in Silver Lining Tweed. That's actually the exact same yarn I used for the original patch (this is more leftovers from the same skein I used before). ⁠ You can see that the original patch faded a good bit since I put it on. This is totally MY fault, NOT the yarn's fault. I have done things to this yarn that no yarn should have to endure. [...]

Like with a lot of projects, the middle of this is going to look a bit messy.  I'm pretty sure if I were doing this right I'd only show you the shiny finished product.  But I always find it refreshing to see that someone else has messy bits in the middle, so I'm leaving them in. The first step was ripping off the old patch.  I'd put it on there rather firmly, and it has been through the wash dozens of times since I put it on, so this part was actually kind of a pain.  But I wanted to [...]

This mending thing is an ongoing process.  If you were here last spring, you may remember I saved the elbow on an old cotton sweater I wear as pajamas.  Well that kept the sweater happily in the rotation for another nine months. But now, the elbow on the other side is starting to get thin.  It doesn't quite have an actual hole yet, but if I don't do something soon, it will. So I've decided to just go all out and fix this up properly.  I'm going to take off the old patch and make a big patch for each [...]

So, I have a couple of cozy house sweaters that have that stupid, irritating band at the bottom. The band like you see on the bottom of sweatshirts. The one that causes the sweater to pull in just at the point where my body goes out.  This is not ideal.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ So today, today I fixed it.⁠ I stared at the band at the side of the sweater, and saw that there was a seam there. So I grabbed my seam ripper (they are so handy, you should have one) and sliced it right on open (as always, amazon links [...]

Just a few more rows... And then a little taper at the top (mostly because picking up a whole row of stitches straight is a pain, so I decided I'd just decrease it away and make a curve)... And it's done! Oh, and then at the end I noticed the cable coming off the side was a little frayed, so I took my tail and duplicate stitched over it to be extra safe. Again, totally not invisible, not subtle, but it will keep the sweater in circulation for a nice long time. I'm trying to decide if I want to [...]