This is my ugly hipster cardigan:

Now you might say, “But Virginia, if you think it’s ugly, why keep it?

That’s a fair question. It really is quite hideous. I think I bought it at Urban Outfitters 11 years ago, which is approx. 10.5 years longer than the intended life span of Urban Outfitters clothing. It has a terrible, slouchy fit, like all hipster clothes.

But I love it. It reminds me of Mr. Rogers. And I always vastly preferred Mr. Rogers to anything else.

Now we shall talk of the Plague of Holes.

For example:

I have a bunch of small, round holes in just a few of my wool sweaters. These holes tend to line up when the sweater is folded. Because it is only a few sweaters, I suspect I have not had moths. But I do have a cat who likes to muddle around in the sweater drawer.

Another thing I like: mending! I love to feel thrifty, y’all. There is a book called Make Do and Mend, and I cannot BELIEVE that I do not already own it. In my mind, it is 1952 Britain, and you can’t get butter or  or silk stockings. (Too many crusty novels.)

However, just because I like mending doesn’t mean I’m good at it.

Having examined the hole,  I determined that the wool of my cardigan is something between lace weight and sock weight. I have a ggreat deal of tiny ends of lace weight. Also, because the cardigan is already ugly, I figured why not just make the mend obvious?

So to start:

You pick up the loose stitches on a needle. (Hey look, I learned how to use the macro function on my camera!)

Then you join the yarn and commence to knittin’, knitting the new yarn together with the old stitches at the edges:

And that’s it. You knit a row for every corresponding row in the hole, then knit together with the next complete row, stuff the ends to the wrong side, and weave them in. Voila! If you’re any good at it, you end up with a nice darn.

Not me:

Very lumpy! It’ll get better with wearing. But what the heck. It’s an ugly cardigan anyway.

I should get  a darning egg.