Good morning, DMV! It’s Thursday, May 14.
I came of age with the mantra reduce, reuse, recycle, then later adopted the buy-nothing philosophy and now have arrived at the art of visible mending. It extends the life of an object or article of clothing. It reduces unnecessary consumption and waste. And it transforms the item, changing its value.
I’d bought a fresh set of wool socks and base layers in 2017. Five years later, they’d worn thin and started getting holes. In the before times, I would have tossed them and bought new gear. But I decided to try my hand at mending.
I got a kit with larger gauge needles than the sewing variety, embroidery floss and a darning mushroom. This pine green base layer, from the brand Smartwool, was one of my first projects.
(All mending photos by Alisa Tang)
I chose a color that added a pop to the green. When I ran out of one color, I finished with another.
Now that they’re mended, I’ve become quite attached to these clothes. They bear my unique mark, created by my own hands.
I mended this Smartwool shirt below the first time with turquoise and purple embroidery floss, then added yellow as the fabric got more holes and runs.
The reddish-pink was my latest mend, with a stitch I learned on YouTube, but I’m not a fan. I prefer the simple weave.
My socks are a constant work in progress. I started with the heel and part of the ankle that rubs against my shoes. Then where my toenails pushed through.
You can tell that the dark blue socks are my favorites. They often need work. The fabric on the big toe is thinning on this side …
… and the ball of my foot on the other. I find the act of mending quite soothing and satisfying.
Each time I wear my mended items, I think of the paradox of the ship of Theseus, about identity and change. The gist of it is, if something has been mended so much that none of the original parts remain, is it the same object? Here is the paradox as written by Plutarch:
The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
Of course I’m far from changing out all the fibers of my socks or shirts. They are the same, yet so very different, enhanced — and I love them all the more for it.
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📰 News around the DMV
15 things to do around D.C. this weekend (The 51st)
📷 Your joy
There are some photos readers sent in that I haven’t been able to delete because they’re so lovely.
This one is from the days after our “snowcrete” storm. Susan Shumaker, who lives in Cecilton, Maryland, on the Sassafras River, was 83 years old when she submitted this photo on Feb. 12. (Was our life in snowcrete only three months ago?)
(Susan Shumaker)
“My dog, Jasper, has no difficulty walking over our ice-topped snow. I took this picture in our backyard a couple days after the snowstorm,” Susan wrote in her submission.
🧦
