I'm darning ...

... and my grandmother will be turning in her grave.

We think Bertie may have been weaned too early.  He sucks and chews blankets, towels and (to our horror) the deep red, heavy-duty linen, loose covers of the sofa in the lounge.  The latter he has only attacked twice, following a fair old ticking off.  He sucks them 'til he removes a small, perfectly oval piece of fabric which he then proceeds to chew contentedly.

The covers have had these three small holes in them for some considerable time.  They do not look pretty as the beige lining fabric of the cushions peeps through.  The task has been "on the list" but never reached the top.  Until now.

As we are staying in the house and not decamping to the cottage this winter, we are beginning to realise that the house needs more loving care.  It is too easy to live on the veranda and in the kitchen throughout summer and ignore the scruffiness elsewhere. Not any more.  Especially as we have friends coming for Christmas lunch and no doubt by late afternoon we will want to collapse in front of a roaring fire against the said Bertie-sucked deep red cushions.  So I am darning the holes, having found a spare bit of the loose cover fabric which came with the original washing instructions, what, some twenty-odd years ago.

My father's mother never had her hands empty.  She was always busy.  I have a faded black and white photo of Mum, Nana and Granddad relaxing in the garden.  I'm in my pram, so it must have been the summer of 1947. Mum on the grass, Granddad in a deckchair and there Nana is with a colander on her lap shelling peas.

If she wasn't shelling peas, or stringing beans, then she was darning socks on a pale beige wooden mushroom.  Beautiful, small, neat darns, squares of interlaced grey wool, the blunt end of the darning needle passing over one thread, under the next.

I'm sorry Nana.  My darns are much coarser and lumpier, but I promise you, no-one will notice after a good Christmas lunch.  (You will though!)