Morning all, Duke’s outside, waiting for the birds and the squirrels to wake up, perhaps a rabbit or two. The Hubsy is in the dining room, and I’m freshly showered, sprayed and powdered.
I’ve been working on restoring an afghan for a few weeks. It came with seriously frayed edges, and the woven in ends have come loose. The problem? I have to hand sew each of those ends back in.
The afghan is done in Tunisian crochet, with many many multiple colors. It’s got squares done less than an inch in size of each color. The woman who made it was a genius, and used a corner to corner technique probably over 25 years ago. The yarn is that old.
The colors are no longer available, even though the company that created the yarn is still around. So, I had to do quite a bit of consultation with the family. I first got permission to replace the areas that are missing with modern yarn, and with modern colors. That was easy to do, and now, I’m using sewing thread to reinforced the joins, and stitch in the loose ends.
It’s taking quite awhile, but this is an heirloom afghan. Sadly, even if I raided thrift stores for completed afghans, there is no guarantee to match the original colors, yarns or such. Basically, this is a salvage job.
With each stitch, I’m trying to be mindful of the work done before me, by a stitcher who has been long since gone. I wonder what she was thinking, what was happening in her life, and how long she did the work for each day. This afghan, even at my top speed, would have taken me 2 or 3 months to work.
I wish I could do this work justice, but my simple stitching just isn’t up to the level that this stitcher did. My main goal is to preserve, and to do no harm.
Hope you are well, take care. I better get back to work. -L
AnonymousKnitter 