April Monthly Mending
My plan was to get this out the first Monday of this month. The first Monday of May this year was also May 1st, my Son’s 32nd birthday. Ok, so 2nd Monday, until I was sick. bleh. Feeling much better today, so here you are… 🙂
Zipper Mend
Mending is as old as owning any belongings. In a couple of past posts I have mentioned mending projects that were not everyday clothing mends: there was the washing machine mend, the mending of drawer in my sewing table, and the replacing of my motorcycle’s clutch lever, to name a few. Sometimes odd categories of mends merge with the mending of clothes, like when the specialty clothes for riding motorcycles need mending. In the rider community we can pay considerable amounts of money to procure good gear. Good being defined as the ability to keep the rider safe in many situations, especially emergencies. Recently Daisy, one of the knitting ladies, brought her husband’s Aerostitch suit to have some of the zipper pulls replaced. He had even purchased the correct pulls from the Aerostitch company. As I was puzzling through the first one, I joked that the reason that many alteration businesses charge so much for zipper replacement is that it is difficult to do. DW said that it is always difficult to do it the first time. Being that he’d done his before, I eagerly implemented his suggestions. He was right and I gratefully told him so. The other two pulls were much quicker to replace. I think they look great, if I do say so myself. 😀 I couldn’t find how much it would have cost to have the suit repaired at the company.
Vintage Measuring Cups
The mend that cost me money
Recently I had gone East over the mountains to mentor a new instructor. The pass was too snowy to drive home on Sunday night, so I stayed overnight and had all of Monday to get home. At the suggestion of DW, I headed North to The Dalles. The day was BEAUTIFUL! So sunny! It was also bitingly cold, but in the car I could turn on the heater. By the time I got to The Dalles, I needed to stop for gas. My butt & back were tired and sore from sitting and driving for hours. I decided that I wanted to get out and walk a bit. I walked right down to the antique store Red Wagon Antiques. As I was entering the store, I decided that I wouldn’t hurry. That I would take the time to look at all the things that I wanted to look at. And I did.
One of the things (one of the many things) that I found was this little set of 4 measuring cups. I liked the shape of them. They nested nicely into each other without the cups being noticeably wider than the the next one. But they were noticeably taller! If you are used to these types of cups, you are probably shaking your head sadly and thinking that I’ve lost my mind. I’m here to let you know that ship has long ago sailed. I added these cups to my growing pile of treasure.
Finally a use for Ketchup
When I got them home, I needed to clean them up to use them. In looking for ways to clean up antique metals in a gentle way that wouldn’t ruin them and leave them as usable, I found out that ketchup will remove rust. I thought to myself, “yeah! Finally a use for ketchup!!”. I really don’t know if the discoloration was rust or it was just old grime. I do know that soaking it in ketchup helped to break it up and made it easy to lightly scrub it off. I’m very pleased with how they turned out. I don’t know if this should be counted as a mend or not. I think that a mend is something that makes an item useful again. If we are working under that definition, then this IS a mend. For the win!!
You must log in to post a comment.