Daily Notes- January 5th

 Yesterday's elbow repair on the charcoal grey sweater.  I seem to wear out the left elbow on all the sweaters.  I am right handed.  So it seems odd.  The entire Boro stitched area above and below the black patch is backed with a donation from a too small black cashmere sweater from LLBean's Employee Store.  (It's now a vest as I have removed both arms).  The black "dot" is actually two layers of black.  That area was entirely gone.  An open hole where my elbow obviously rubbed the fibers away.

Today I am working on my most favorite and treasured sweater pictured below.

As you can see large areas are already covered in patches.  And adjacent to them- more holes.  I can imagine the entire donor sweater being used to patch this sweater in the months and years ahead.  The reason I do this mending- I can't find sweaters to replace them.  New sweaters being sold as cashmere are very thin, very smelly and obnoxious colors.  Goodwill hasn't had any cashmere in years- daughter and I check out every grey or charcoal sweater in two different Goodwill's often.  We don't care what size they are.  But we do smell them.  Some smell like chemicals and others smell like dung. And they feel weird to the touch.  Too light.  Flimsy.  Not good for patching.

I also went up to the Attic see what I had for Boro stitching on this light grey one.  I found a ball of thin but springy pale yellow green.  I think the yellow green will look interesting in many lines of small stitches over the surface of the patches.  It may turn out to be too thick.  But I will give it a go.

I'm 74.  My parents (neither healthy) lived into their mid 80's.  There is a very good possibility I will be wearing these two sweaters into my mid to late 80's.  10- 15 years.  Unless COVID gets me. A possibility. So, I need to keep working on the patching.  I think the Boro will help stabilize the sweaters.  But not too much as the weight of the stitches might be hazardous to the sweater's life.  Anyway- that's what's going on today.

I am patching as America heads toward an uncertain Future. Sixteen Days. Until January 20th.  And let's remind ourselves- people are dying every day, every hour of COVID because the Man Who Thinks He is  "perfectly" in Charge - worries about votes not people.  Cannot even ship vaccine to the States properly.