Gratitude and glimmers
Making new memories through mending
Over the last few years, I’ve integrated a gratitude practice into my day. It was suggested by a therapist who told me that to get the benefits I really need to do it daily. One of the best ways to create new habits is to anchor them to something else you already do. The only time I thought I would remember to do it daily without fail and make space for it was before I went to sleep.
Every night, I think of at least three things I’m grateful for. Sometimes it’s harder than others. On those days, I fall back on the same things – being grateful for having a cosy bed to rest in, my house, family and enough food to eat. At other times, when my days have been full of glimmers – a chat with a friend, time to myself, darning, a picture drawn by one of my kids, kindness from a stranger, hanging laundry in my garden in the sunshine complete with a background of birdsong – my head and heart are full of gratitude.
This practice has transformed my mindset at bedtime and helped me fall asleep more easily. If I wake with worries during the night, I do a little extra gratitude practice and it rarely fails to help me feel calmer.
Thinking about mending has a similar effect. Last night, when I closed my eyes, before I focused on gratitude, I thought about today’s post and what I would write. I reflected for a few moments and after a bit more thought, I had the hook and structure in my head. Perfect. I felt calmer, like my mind was in more order. I guess not long after I thought grateful thoughts, I drifted off.
This morning I woke, ready to write. Only I’d totally forgotten what my master plan had been. It was gone. I figured at some point during the morning, if I didn’t focus on it too hard, the elusive thought would drift lazily back into my head – a fluffy seed of an idea floating back to me on the breeze. I’d reach out to catch it, to hold it firm. It would evade me but after a few attempts it would be in my clutches again, committed to memory.
Not so today. That little seed has well and truly gone. No doubt it’ll come back into my head once I’ve published this…
I wrote about this Diesel denim jacket a few weeks ago and it needs quite a bit of attention. We’re on a journey together, a multi-layered mending odyssey. Part therapy, part practicality.
For this second repair, this time on a worn cuff, I considered another patched Sachiko mend but I felt like I wanted to darn it. Not long ago I did a cuff repair on a knitted cardigan – the process of strengthening the fabric was similar in some ways, though the effect is very different.
My mending kit for this repair:
Needles, one long, one short
Snips
Cotton embroidery thread
Here’s how I did this repair:
First, I nudged the straggling, yellow stitching down into the cuff, in between the two layers of denim.
I snipped off the loose, worn threads
Using the orange thread, I stitched from behind the cuff, through to the front, up and over the edge of the cuff and back through to the front again. This created a kind of thread spiral warp. I used this method because I wanted to strengthen the front and the reverse of the cuff edge, and this allowed me to darn both sides. It’s important here not to make these warp threads too tight, otherwise it’ll create an uneven line to the edge of the cuff.
When the orange thread I’d cut was finished, I switched to pink for some variety, before finishing with orange.
To create the weft – the horizontal threads – I began by weaving the purple thread over and under alternate warp threads. With each row, I gently nudged the new weft thread down. This allowed me to weave a strong darned patch.
After a few rows, I reached the top edge of the cuff. Then I wove a few rows, this time in pink, on the inside edge of the cuff to give the worn edge more stability.
When I started this repair, I was watching The Hobbit. I seem to have imprinted that memory into the darn and now each time I look at it I think of Middle Earth! I also know that when I wear my jacket, this new repair will bring me a glimmer of joy and gratitude whenever it catches my eye.
What’s coming up this week:
My mending pile: I may do a little morning darning on this jacket.
Next week on The Mending Kit: a couple of little holes on a fine knit navy jumper
Want to read some more of my posts about darning? You can find them here: Darns from The Mending Kit.
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