Mend and make do

The other day this Work In Progress resurfaced -

It's a bit of almost-finished mending on my favourite teatowel, which was an irresistibly useful extravagance many years ago. Made in Sweden by Ekelund, with an interesting four-colour weave to be double sided, it was much used and now, let's face it, it's pretty well worn out, appropriately in the area of the coffee pot.

But I'm not afraid of darning - indeed, it's a peaceful activity with lots of scope for listening to the radio or podcasts. I'm trying to make time for peaceful activities with a listening component...

And there is a growing pile of mending - hems needing fixing, moth-holes needing disguising, hanging loops needing adding, that sort of thing. So instead of heading off to a coffee shop, I "should" be settling down to get on ith it. (Wouldn't it be "interesting" to sit in the coffee shop and do some mending there - a "mending morning" sounds like a community-minded monthly event that coffee shops, libraries, or bookshops could undertake ... but I dream ...)

Back to reality and a zingy cardigan bought during the art foundation course (2009), which I still love, silly stitched-in writing notwithstanding. Its appeal lies in the colour - and yet, it's the colour that's the problem. Darning wool is wanted, but is not to hand, and my extensive cache of embroidery threads doesn't have a match.

The search for something that might just do started with the totally unsuitable rosy colour to the left, got a bit nearer with the perle purples, which are too thick. The stranded-cotton drawer had plenty of offerings and reminded me that "Tone does the work, but colour gets the credit" - so it became a search for the right tone. The red and the purple seemed the best candidates.

A tiny trial shows the purple to be too dark, as confirmed by the mend on the left -

Using one strand of red and one of purple seems to work (to the right of the buttonhole). It'll do...

Once the small holes are mended, the crunch will come with the frayed cuff -

Needle felting is a possibility - so is turning the cuffs under and stitching them down.

Plan A, though, is to try to get some (tapestry) wool to match, which involves a trip to London Bead Co in Kentish town, a 45-minute walk - killing two birds with one stone, to use an unfortunate turn of phrase - or three, if a pit-stop coffee and cake is factored in. Something to do before, perhaps, "making do".