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Mending and Alpacas

Or alpacas and then mending. The alpacas are much cuter.

A low-angle photo of two cream alpacas with brown patches on the crowns of their heads and black halters, posing proudly for the camera. A russet alpaca with very dense face fur peers from behind the nearest cream alpaca's neck; the fluorescent lights of the arena halo all their heads, and a hanging banner proclaims "Genetics with Purpose" over the red fabric barrier behind the alpacas.
Boy band from the 90s reporting for duty.
These two had stylish tuxedos on top, and skinny jeans below.

A cream and tan alpaca head stuffed under a red fabric barrier, snarfing hay out of a black tote.
I guarantee there's food on the other side of that barrier.
Somebody proved that the grass is literally always greener on the other side of the fence. Always.

Four alpacas, one with its head out of frame and two in the background facing away, in a range of grey-browns and russet. The nearest one has a white face and socks, and is wearing a black halter.
So fluffy.
I love their faces. And their little bitty feet. And their fiber.

A blurry close-up of a dark brown alpaca's nose peering over an enclosure, with cocked ears and messy scene kid hair.
Zoom lens.
Once in a while, someone comes over to say hello, too.

A close-up of a frayed hole in a piece of denim, just above a gathered seam showing wear on the tops of the gathered section, with a silver needle threaded with blue-purple sewing thread stabbed through the seam.
Don't wash your clothes before you mend them.
Over the course of the weekend, I put a hole in my current favorite skirt, front and center (oy). And then I washed it, because it was just a little hole. Pro tip: Don't...uh...do that. The hole will get bigger and the torn threads will be much fluffier and it'll make your life harder than it has to be.

I've also never darned anything, so this was a Learning Experience. As in, laying out evenly spaced warp threads to weave over a hole in fabric is more challenging than I would have expected.

A needle with blue-purple thread woven through a loose lattice of blue-purple thread covering a small hole in a piece of denim fabric, just above a gathered seam.
I swear that thread isn't purple.
Also, once you've done that, weaving the new patch is...weird. Mostly for tension reasons; it's tempting to cinch up the thread tight to close the hole, but it really needs to match the cloth as closely as possible. And the threads need to be packed in next to each other to make a sturdy piece of replacement cloth, which took me a few tries to get right.

A roughly woven patch over a small frayed hole in a piece of denim, just above a gathered seam. The patch is composed of interlaced blue-purple and royal-blue threads, and stands out sharply against the worn denim.
It blends much better in person.
I ended up adding a few threads of a second shade of blue, to blend the darker navy with the skirt fabric, and have been informed by reliable witnesses that if they notice the repair, it looks like an embellishment. Success!

A messy stack of pallets on a leaf-scattered concrete patio with an orange-and-grey-handled claw hammer and a large wooden-handled handsaw resting on top of the stack. The top pallet has had one supporting board removed.
Brute force and ignorance!
So how does one put a hole in the front of a skirt? I mean, there are lots of ways. But I was kneeling on a pallet on top of a stack of other pallets, sawing the end riser free of the planks, and caught the last tooth of the saw on my skirt.

What?

OSHA inspectors look at my whole existence and weep. Construction (or destruction) work in a skirt is very, very low on the list of safety violations I've committed. And I got a pile of usable wood for garden projects out of it, too.

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