To err is human, to mend is divine

My dear brother Grumpy brought back to me a few months ago the fingerless gloves I had made for him for Christmas 2009.  He brought them back because some evil moths had gotten to them and eaten holes in them.  If you didn't guess where this is going, now I get to learn some new skills, namely mending holes in knitting.  The more observant readers out there probably  caught the timing in the first sentence, he brought them to me several months ago and I am only now getting to them, yes I am a bit intimidated by having to fix the moth larvae damage.  And no, I really don't want to do it I would much rather knit something new.  However Grumpy really loves the gloves and wants to be able to wear them again so mend I must.

now that's some moth damage!

First of all, right after he brought the holey things back to me my mind went bananas, screaming moths, motHS, MOTHS! over and over in an endless loop.  I mean, how dare Grumpy introduce moth larvae into my sterile yarn loving house?!  So I ran into the kitchen to find a ziploc of the appropriate size and crammed those suckers in as fast as I could.  Then I perused the interwebz looking for assistance as to what to do with the defiled gloves sitting in my kitchen.  First off I put them into the freezer for a few weeks, than I put them on the counter to bring up to room temperature before re-freezing again to kill any newly hatched bugs.  Then I forgot about them for awhile again before defrosting them again and then putting them in the microwave for 3 minutes on high.  Then they went back in the ziploc (can't take any chances with my stash or finished knits you know!) inside my knitting bag awaiting their turn with my undivided attention.

can barely see the mend on the side of the pinky finger, yea me!

One of the gloves had rather minor holes, the other was significantly worse so of course I decided to start with the easier one.  I used these articles from Knitty to help me figure out what to do.  Thankfully Grumpy wasn't particular about the gloves looking as they had when brand new so it didn't need to look perfect when finished.  And let me tell you, after I had some time with them to do my best to fix the holes, they do not look like new.  Thankfully I still had some of the yarn I used originally left in my stash so at least the mended holes aren't glaringly obvious.  However, they are quite visible.  Now that the first glove is fixed I need to suck it up and go after the second ones, they are just much worse (and thus are still languishing in my knitting bag as I write this!).

how the heck do you mend ribbing?!