Everyday...

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.