A recent visitor showed me a few tailoring tricks; I hope to stretch them a long way in catching up with my mending and alterations…
First off the needle: a green Aran sweater that I saved from a thrift store years ago. It cost a quarter and was full of holes, but the yarn and the pattern was beautiful… I couldn’t leave it to become rag fodder.
My friend, the clever man that he is, say something that is very much in keeping with a general philosophy that I hold in life. He commented that hiding darning is quite different, so he choose to show it off; to pick contrast yarns and let them be obvious. Obvious intent has been important to me for awhile and I liked his idea that one should not be afraid to reveal that his clothing is well-loved and well-worn. Clothing should be allowed to grow old; we should be allowed to grow old…
His comment reminded me of the old skin horse from The Velveteen Rabbit, my favorite love-as-an-adult-children’s-book. To paraphrase: by the time something (or someone) has been around enough to be loved long enough to become real, the fur is rubbed off, the stitches are splitting and various parts have dropped off.
What more fitting metaphor is there for growing up into ones own life…?
So it is that this floppy old sweater has become a symbol for my journey to becoming real. Not such a bad icon to have for such things. I am rather fond of the wonkiness of it. And the pattern and flecks in the yarn are truly beautiful to me. OF course, as I was removing it after the photo-shoot, I found another hole in need of mending; c’est la vie.
Journey on, my lovelies!
