sock mending

My lovely sock that I knitted back here recently developed holes from my intensive wearing...

I recently procured a darning mushroom...

Which makes the mending - a combo of swiss darning and grafting - much easier...

I used some leftovers from other recent sock knitting for the mend...

All ready for more intensive wearing xo

cushion mend

We have a couple of gorgeous Maiike cushions made from up cycled materials, given to us as a wedding gift from this fellow and his lovely wife. We had a bit of a moth problem last year and I keep discovering holes in woolly objects. I don't mind though... I like practising my darning and grafting and giving the cushions ongoing care through making. 

cardi mend

It's a long time since I wore my once favourite cardigan ... the one that I mended with granny squares a few years back. When I pulled it out of the cupboard to wear last week I discovered a big moth hole on the front.

We were crafternooning at our place on the weekend so I did some mending with the latest sock yarn leftovers.

I wore it today and noticed another little hole on the sleeve ... back to the darning needle!

laptop jumper mend

My laptop cover has been in constant use since May 2011 when this happened ...
Funny that the jumper I never wore has become so 'well worn' now. This is the 4th round of mending that it has needed - applying a combo of swiss darning and grafting, using the yarn that I also use for this, and this ongoing project (cardis or socks always on the go now). The material flows across and through various making and objects, linking these things forever.

The mend prior to this was a rather desperate, post PhD, 'plug all the holes that I hadn't attended to in a long time' affair. This time there were only a couple of little holes developing, and this time attended to in good time.

new things

I have some new beginnings lately...although I'm not really sure where I'm heading!
I finished the latest baby cardi...a friends new bub is just about here :o)

I got onto my elbow patch project, using an old well loved printed cardi, and some of the crocheted grannies I was working on here.  This cardigan was my favourite "go to" cardi around 7 or 8 years ago (my fav now is a big oversized machine washable grey woolly that came from the op shop).  There's a nice narrative of remnants and mending within it...

I swiss darned across a little ladder in the cuff, and used the granny squares to stitch over the elbow holes.  These particular grannies were made using the remnants from first of the sock yarn cardies which I made for my niece.

In this last pic you can see the previous mending - the darning which my mum did lots of years ago.

I'm taking my everyday craft practice into other projects...using leather remnants stitched together to make a thick leather yarn which I have then crocheted into a massive granny square using a 20mm hook...

I'm unsure how this will be applied to a garment form at the moment.

New things are popping up in the garden like these dwarf beans, the last for the season...I hope we have some continued warm weather for the last of the summer crops...

And the water tanks (1 in the front garden, and two in the back) now have a wire mesh covering to grow some lovely plants on them.  This one behind the workroom is filled by the water from it's roof, and connects to the watering system for the adjoining patch which you can see in the pic above.  I planted two old fashioned noisette roses next to it - Lamarque, and Mme Alfred Carriere in the winter, which now are able to be tied up away from the trampling doggles!  I'm hoping that next spring will see them flourish and bloom and eventually creep over the workroom roof to create some nice living insulation :o)