make do and mend

i've been looking since the beginning of the year for one of these, scouring antique stores and flea markets on two continents. it's a clever little darning tool and i saw them first on instagram, under the #visiblemending hashtag. it's like an itty bitty loom and enables you to weave a strong patch on your item of clothing that needs mending. i asked my friend who works at the local red cross charity shop to look out for one for me, but i finally managed to find this one myself. funnily enough, after searching high and low across denmark, and in arizona and south dakota, i found it in an esoteric little antique/junk shop about 12km from home. as i went up to pay, i showed the owner a picture of what i was looking for and he said, we have one and called his wife to help find it! and even better, they were having a sale, where if you spent more than 100kr, then your whole bill would be 50% off, so i got this little speedweve/stoppekonen for a mere 50kr (approx $7)! i've seen them on ebay for as high as 2000kr., so it was quite the steal! i was so delighted and excited, i hugged the woman who owned the shop.

they also had three beautiful darning mushrooms, which i snapped up as well for my collection. they were 5kr apiece, so i paid a mere 2.50kr after the discount. that's about 35 cents apiece!!  i'm building up a collection of all kinds of different darning eggs and mushrooms, in the hopes that i can start up a local group where we can do visible mending together on a saturday morning once a month. it's a small step, repairing the clothes you already own, but a step nonetheless.

my favorite one is on the left and i adore the one on the right as well. but the one in the middle - look how much it's been used! just imagine all of the things that have been darned and mended using it. i'm always wishing that i could tune in to hear the stories that vintage objects could tell. this well-loved, much-used darning mushroom, must be so full of stories. even though i can't access them, i feel happy that i can hold them here with my collection. maybe late one night, if i listen carefully, i'll hear all of the darning mushrooms whispering to one another in the tin and be able to hear their stories.