I can vaguely remember my moom and other relatives darning socks when I was a kid. I’ve always been the kind of person who finds a hole in their sock and “darns” it by saying “Oh darn” and throwing it into the trash. What the heck? I can just order more socks, right? I might even be able to subscribe to socks these days.

Except I also get holes in the right elbows of my turtlenecks. The loverly ones that I buy from Chico’s. They are a staple in my wardrobe, both biz caz (which we haven’t even had to adhere to for a few years) and as a general cold weather inner layer. Alas, at Cubelandia I tend to lean on my right elbow a lot and holes happen. Until now I have been ordering new turtlenecks and throwing the old ones out.

Okay, the big problem is that Chico’s doesn’t sell these turtlenecks at this time of year. It’s all summer clothes, a lot of which are not my fave. So for whatever reason (pandemic thinking but maybe not), I started thinking about mending the elbows. In a creative kind of way… I even looked up patches on the intertubes. Of all things, RANDOMLY (or maybe not…), a post flew by my Instagram tagged #visiblemending and WOW! I gotta check this out.

THAT got me thinking about a book I have owned forever and I was kinda thinking it might have instructions for darning things. It’s a large, thick paperback encyclopedia of needlework techniques. So I went to the bookshelf where I thought the book was and… It was NOT THERE! Where could it be? I looked in every place I could possibly think of. I googled all over hell and gone to try and find a replacement but I couldn’t remember the exact title. I even texted my grocery delivery rodent to ask if she might have it. She knew exactly what I was talking about but is overwhelmed with work and moving house. So nada on all fronts.

Eventually, I sat down on my bed and studied the bookshelf I thought this book was on one more time and… I spied a big paperback book shelved on its side. It was about the right size and YES. It was my book! We actually own two copies but both 🐭 and I think the other copy is at the moomincabin. For posterity, I ordered two more copies from eBay today. That’s kind of against my usual anti-hoarding policies but for some reason it felt like the right thing to do. I mean, you never know when a comet might hit the Earth. (Oh, don’t worry, it was not expensive.)

After all that, the original topic I was interested in researching, which was darning, is not included in the book at all.

Oh darn.

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