It’s another rainy Monday. After the l-o-n-g dry spell this summer I’m still enjoying the rain. The dry cracked ground is soaking it up gratefully just in time to make mushrooms and toadstools grow into lovely fairy villages.
I’m sitting here drinking another cup of coffee, collecting my thoughts and trying to plan my day. But the trees I see thru my deck door are alive with flocks of birds- crows, finches and God-only-knows what else. The squirrels are arguing angrily with bluejays and crows about who gets walnuts or hazelnuts, both from trees in our hedgerow that the birds and squirrels themselves planted a decade ago. It’s a jungle out there and I’m enjoying watching the chaos.
Today’s plan is to do more listing, eventually on this website, of bandanas that are prepped and photo’d. A lot goes into getting product from ‘found’ to ‘ready to sell’. There’s cleaning, measuring and photos. But the one area most people avoid or skip is the repairing or mending.
I buy things in spite of their needing repairs IF I think it’s worthy of my time. Most are easy fixes- seams, hems or buttons. Others take a Herculean effort- decades old sweat stains in collars or on pillowcases can be soaked out with great patience and sunshine. I’ve rewoven moth holes in Harris tweed jackets (and am finally getting ready to work on a Burberry Harris tweed jacket). I’m still in the process of darning 25+ holes (an epic moth feast) in a Burberry lambswool ruanna that I’m keeping for myself (asking myself ‘why’ the whole time). Just crazy I guess.
I have a large stack of things waiting to be repaired so I’m dedicating Mondays as a Mend-day each week. If I get at least one item completed each week I’ll catch up eventually as long as I slow down buying ‘wounded’ clothing, lol.
Today’s project is re-sewing some stems and petals on a pretty vintage floral applique quilt. That should be an easy fix which is good because all things considered, I’d rather sit here and watch the birds in the yard.
Next week I’m going to tackle replacing a couple of zippers in two vintage dresses. I don’t enjoy doing zippers- I’d much rather mend holes in woolens but no worries, there’s plenty of those too!