phi

As part of this winter’s “learn to darn” project I checked out a book that Andrea had gotten out of the library after she returned it, because I like to have a book about things when learning a new skill, even if it’s the sort of skill where books aren’t the best resource–and for mending, I have to admit the superiority of video tutorials. The book was Skye Pennant’s Well Worn: Visible Mending for the Clothes You Love, and it turns out she also has a channel full of video tutorials, so I could use both. Yay!

This book was great for learning more about mending, like, contextually, and seeing lots of pictures of what it could look like and learning to think about how to approach specific mends. It is organized largely by type of clothing and type of damage, which is very useful–I could go right to “sweaters” and “socks,” and see what she recommends as the best type of darn for fixing underarms, or elbows, or heels. I also learned what some of the different types of stitches are called, which is a thing I’d managed never to learn before even on the occasions I had learned the stitches themselves. This all made it much easier and more helpful to figure out what to look for when looking for video tutorials on Youtube, which I did have to do for my actual mending because I did find myself having a fairly difficult time trying to translate the still images of the various steps of stitching into motion, especially with the horizontal image flip I had to mentally do given that I have a different dominant hand than the author.

At the end of the day I am not sure I’m hugely on the visible mending train specifically since my wardrobe tends to be pretty monochromatic, but it’s nice to have options and it’s good in the learning phase to not be focused on the idea that if a darn is visible then I have somehow failed. If the hole is gone then I have not failed. Maybe one of these days I’ll be brave enough to darn black socks with red thread, but in the meantime, my favorite black sweater is nice and discreetly Scotch darned and I can wear it again, so overall I’m feeling pretty pleased about the whole endeavor.