Just before Christmas I opened my wardrobe and took out a long merino wool cardigan to wear when going out for the evening. It went well with the dress I was going to wear and I felt good in it! Sadly it wasn’t until the next morning that I realised there were several quite large moth holes in the front, back and sides. Rather embarrassing!

Good intentions to mend it were shelved over the holiday, but today I got down to the task. Fortunately I had a pack of darning yarn that is quite a good colour match, so I dug out my antique ‘Sellars Rapid Darner’ darning loom and a long darning needle and got cracking. It always takes me a while to get back into the swing of this task and remember the little tricks. I remembered that I find it makes a neater darn to thread the cross-thread yarn through the ‘warp’ threads from side to side

with the blunt, eyed end of the needle so that it doesn’t split the wool. Then I use the needle to pack the cross-threads down into the warp threads before lifting the opposite set of warp threads.

I was quite pleased with the results, but can obviously improve and finesse my technique!