Boro and Travelling

Darning on the train

Journeying from Scotland to Norway and down the back of the left leg of my jeans. 

When in the middle of make-do-and-mend, travelling by train is good. There is a wee bit of room to spread out materials and tools - scissors, needles, patching material and darning threads. There's even a wee bit of elbow room if you are small like me!




It's also an intriguing social experiment: some of the reactions from my fellow travellers were very interesting. One older man asked what I was doing and when I explained about my 2 year shopping fast / make-do-and-mend challenge he looked at my beloved jeans incredulously and said 'well those are only fit for the bin aren't they?!'


No. No they aren't 'fit for the bin'. They will last me a long time yet if I tend them with care.

Retrieving fragility

A journey's worth of darning

Every stitch I put in to rescue another small section from disintegration makes these cheap, second-hand jeans more and more precious  to me. The layers of time and attention make them more and more priceless and irreplaceable.


The time invested is visible here in this block of stitching, all one colour, neatly filling a gap between three previous patches. Not even a whole hand-span it's true, but no longer a raggedy hole on the back of my leg!