handle with love

I've come to believe that mending is an art form, really, it requires manual skills, knowledge about different materials and their interaction - as well as a bit of imagination. It's a good way to think about a sometimes tiresome task, isn't it, pretending it's an art form ... but a somewhat forgotten art form, though. Anyway, this cardigan of mine is so loved that it's almost worn to pieces, but not quite. I'm determined to really wear it to pieces, so elbow patches was the first step in that direction. I considered several ways of doing it, patches can say so much about a person without words, you know, and I really didn't want my patches to say something about me that I didn't like. Ahem. Finally I opted for the exceptional loving, totally homemade version. Remember these babes? Yummy fleece, I tell you! I've spun some of it - and that's what I used for the patches.

Another way of mending, like mending socks. Only it's a dress and embroidery yarn. It works well, I think, considering it's a very lightweight silk/cotton dress, and the mends are quite visible on the front of the dress. But I'll wear it proudly.

Lastly, this is (some of) my work in progress. Some spinning, both on wheel and spindle. The dark yarn is also from the before mentioned twins - together with some bunny fleece, making it tweedy, and oh so soft. The yarn on the spindle is a blend of a superlative longstapled wool from Gaia - more bunny fleece and some natural dyed wool (from Gaia's mother Karla, I think). It's both silky shiny and matte at the same time, and variated in colour since I just toss some fibres on the hand carders.
The granny square is a part of a project I made up for easy-bringing-along-to-the-beach-or-going-by-car-etc. So this square is 1 out of something like 280 squares for a blanket. That's a whole lot. Perhaps someone I know will get pregnant and then I could settle for a baby blanket instead. Allways look at the bright side!

This is what the sky looked like last night. The purple colours in the upper part of the picture looks like my natural dyed purple, I think. Or is it the other way around?