The small boy, Grandson Number Two, took himself off to the bathroom yesterday, or rather, his mother took him off to the bathroom. Before coming downstairs he went for a rummage about in the spare bedroom and came down with my darning mushroom. He likes to see if there is anything interesting to investigate. Why, he wanted to know, did I have what looked remarkably like a wooden mushroom or toadstool? So I explained to him how a darning mushroom works, how you can put it inside a sock which needs darning so that you have a good surface to work on, weaving the thread in and out.
We went on to discuss whether it still is used - yes, it is - and where it came from. I really don’t know if it is still possible to buy such gadgets. Do people, apart from me, still darn socks and other garments? In fact, his oldest sister does darn socks. I think she learnt how to do so from YouTube video, just as she learnt how to knit and crochet. I had taught her to knit when she was a small child but she needed to relearn. It’s amazing what you can learn from YouTube!
As to where the darning mushroom came from, well, this one belonged to my grandmother, so it’s a bit of a family heirloom. This led to speculation as to what should happen to it after I stop using it. Ideally, we decided, it should be given to his sister, Granddaughter Number One, as she would be the most likely to make use of it. On the other hand, she is a bit of a hoarder and her house is full of clutter. (“What’s clutter, Grandma?” “Oh, when you have lot of stuff all over the place.” “You mean a mess?” “You’ve got it?) the darning mushroom would disappear into the clutter, like her kindle and various other useful items, usually found with pleasure weeks after they were needed. So maybe the darning mushroom should go to Granddaughter Number Two, the next oldest sister, as she is obsessively tidy and could quite easily teach herself to darn.
The mushroom came in useful this morning, by the way. We are moving into the season of warm tights, in a range of colours, depending on the rest of my outfit. The ones selected this morning had a small hole in one foot. So I had to hunt about for thread of a suitable colour to carry out a repair. I suppose I could have thrown the tights out and bought a new pair buy this particular shade of blue, maybe teal, comes usually in a pack with a couple of pairs of black ones. Black tights I have a plenty. It’s very annoying that it is difficult to find individual pairs of specific colours these days. Everything comes in multipacks! And I really don’t like throwing stuff away (see below on recycling clothes). So I made use of the darning mushroom that the small boy had brought down yesterday. All good!
I commented recently on someone who went to Ghana, I think it was Ghana, and spent some time sorting through discarded clothing, part of an attempt to save the world. Here’s a link to an article about someone on a similar mission in Ireland. Shocked, but inspired by seeing piles of discarded clothing on a beach in Kenya, she founded Change Clothes, a non-profit organisation that hosts a swap shop in Dublin and runs pop-up outlets and workshops across Ireland. It lets people rent, exchange and buy used clothes and gives tutorials in mending and upcycling frayed garments. Every little helps!
And here’s a link to an article by George Monbiot about some Stop Oil activists who have been sentenced to two years in prison for throwing soup at Van Gogh paintings. He points out that the same judge who sentenced them gave suspended sentences to men accused of violent crimes - an odd disparity. Some might ask why the Stop Oil people target works of art - another pair recently glued themselves to a painting - rather than oil producing places. Well, mostly because “attacking” famous works of art gets more media attention. Even people who don’t go to art galleries are rather shocked when famous sunflowers are targeted. Usually the paintings are behind glass so they are not actually harmed, by the way!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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