Amoeba? Or Egg?
Published On: December 13, 2013

I am a firm believer in both sweaters and pajamas.  And sometimes, when a sweater has put in lots of hard service as a piece of ‘go out in the world’ clothing, it gets to retire and be relabeled as pajamas.  Such was the case for this snuggly, purple zip up sweater with a handy kangaroo pocket on the front.  It is too tatty to wear out in public (I do have some standards), but it works perfectly well as something to sleep in (ah my life is so glamorous).

Or at least it did, until today, when I noticed it had a big hole on the pocket.  This wasn’t one of those one popped stitch deals you can just catch with a bit of thread and stop in its tracks.  No, this was a stick your hole thumb through sort of deal.  I have no idea how it happened, but I suspect kittens.  I decided I’d see if I could mend it.  Worst case, I waste a few minutes and throw it away.  Best case, I get to keep my sweater a bit longer.

Now with a hole this size, and a sweater this color, I wasn’t going to be able to get an invisible mend.  So I decided I’d go with blatantly obvious instead.

_DSC9052I started by running a strand of thread up and down adjacent columns of knitting.  When I got to the missing bits, I just kept the fabric flat and let the thread to along on its own.

_DSC9060Then I turned and did the same thing going the other direction (going over and under my first set of strands), again being careful to keep the fabric flat when I went over the hole.

_DSC9062I suppose I could have stopped there.  That would have kept the hole from growing.  But it looks awful and I would have caught it with my thumb every time I put my hand in my pocket.  That won’t do.

So next I grabbed a scrap of gray wool felt and cut out a wobbly random shape.  I stitched it on over the missing bit with some yellow thread as a sort of patch.

_DSC9068This would have been perfectly functional, but I didn’t yet find it quite amusing enough.  Since subtle was clearly not what I was going for, I did a second, smaller patch out yellow wool felt and stitched it on with a bit of grey thread.

_DSC9072bI’m unreasonably amused.  Now, no, it is absolutely not a pretty/proper/fancy/sophisticated patch.  But this is an ancient sweater that is now used only as pajamas.  My goals were a) don’t have to throw the sweater away b) use whatever was on hand c) embrace the ahem…casual…nature of the project d) be amused.  Judging by those criteria, it’s a rousing success.

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