The Shopping Alternative

As I’ve mentioned before, I hate to shop for clothes. In terms of desirability, it ranks right up there for me with root canals, spinning around in circles until I fall over, and One Direction.

Because of this, my current wardrobe is roughly as old as I am, which means that it’s in a state of rapidly accelerating decay, which can potentially lead to embarrassing situations. (“But I remember putting on pants this morning! Where’d they go?”)

This has left me with two choices, assuming that going to jail due to indecent exposure charges is something I’d rather avoid: Buying new clothes, or fixing the ones I already own.

Being a stubborn Finlander who likes to avoid both social contact and the expenditure of money, I’ve chosen the second option and recently began to fix – or perhaps the better term would be to “mend” – my rapidly dissolving wardrobe, all from the comfort of my own home.

In order to take up this task, I’ve fallen back on the skills I learned during middle school sewing class, ignoring the fact that my middle school cooking class skills haven’t exactly stuck with me over the years. (“Oh boy, this hamburger is getting out of control! Man your battle stations! I need one of those pokey-prong-thingies, and a knifeamajig!”)

Back in middle school, my main sewing accomplishment was the construction of a stuffed shark from a kit. I was rather happy with my work, proudly naming the shark San Jose. (I still like that name, even though nobody else ever did.) Unfortunately, ever since then, the world hasn’t lent me many opportunities to construct any additional stuffed sharks, which has left me rusty in the sewing department.

Still, I haven’t been intimidated.

Recently, I mended a pair of shorts, where the lining in the pocket had torn. Here’s a brief overview of how it went down:

For the first eight to ten hours, I attempted to thread the needle, which is at roughly the same difficulty level as spearing a mosquito out of the air with a toothpick while blindfolded. Luckily, I was working from the comfort of my own home, so my colorful language did not fall upon the ears of any young children. Eventually, I had to resort to the old man trick of taking off my glasses in order to see better. (You’ll only understand this when it happens to you, and then it’ll be too late.) The result was I was finally able to thread the needle, but at the expense of every last illusion I had of me retaining any vestige of my youth.

Then came the actual sewing. I had no idea what I was doing and just winged it, with my main goal being not to poke myself more than eight or nine times in the process. (I don’t know if I succeeded. I lost count due to weakness from blood loss.) My line of stitching had a cardiogram-type pattern to it, as it happily weaved its way here and there, sometimes not even joining together the two desired pieces of fabric. The end result was a sewing job usually associated with what’s holding together Frankenstein’s Monster’s various limbs.

However, despite the lack of intrinsic beauty, I was successful in my efforts! My shorts are now fixed and ready for action! The true test will be how long they last before either a new tear occurs or my patchwork stitching falls apart. Still, it’s better than buying new shorts. Plus, even if my sewing job doesn’t last long, I still have one more trick up my sleeve: duct tape.