People come in to the shop and talk to me about textiles. Today a young man rode up on his bike, left it unlocked and strode into the shop with some obvious purpose. I walked from the back of the shop (where I have tables set up for felting) to meet him. "I have a problem with my sweater," he said with an accent that I couldn't specifically place. He was wearing a constructed grey sweater with black, grey and orange velvet strips that made a rectangle across the chest, and orange stitching like vines around the sleeves, and cuffs sewn in with different gray patterns in the knit... He pointed to a hole near the elbow. "This is a really good one of a kind sweater," he said, "When they make these they only do one small, medium, and large and that's it - no more of this design." I offered him a needle and thread. He seemed to think just sewing it up wasn't sufficient. I looked at the three small round orange patches at the lower left corner of the front of the sweater. "How about you patch it with orange like those patches?" I suggested. He liked that idea, it was more elevated than plain stitching, and honored the careful construction. Happily, he headed out of the shop, thanking me. After he rode off I remembered a piece of orange felt I'd seen that day while I was moving everything around to prepare for workshops- a remnant I'd removed from a red flower. I ran after him, "Wait!" I shouted. He came back and I gave it to him - "I remembered I had this piece of orange felt you can use," handing him the small perfect answer he was looking for.
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