What to buy first for sweater repair

A knitwear repair kit is smaller than a general mending kit, because most of the work is done with three items. The money goes on yarn, and the difficulty is matching it. No brands are compared; nothing here was tested against anything else.

What to take away

• Blunt yarn needles in two sizes. Sharp needles cut loops and cause the next hole.
• One rounded support. A wooden darning mushroom, an egg, or a ball in a clean sock.
• Yarn matched by fiber and by fineness, not by color.
• Skip yarn kits sold by color range. You need fineness, and color ranges do not sort for it.

The list, in order

• Blunt yarn needles, one fine and one medium
• A rounded darning support
• A fine contrasting thread for securing live loops before you start
• Wool yarn in a neutral, split down to the thickness of the garment yarn if needed
• Small sharp scissors reserved for yarn

That is a complete kit. Everything after it is specific to one garment.

The item people leave out is the contrasting thread for securing loops. It costs almost nothing and it is what turns a small hole into a repairable one instead of a run that swallows half a sleeve while you look for the right yarn. Thread it through the live loops the moment you notice the damage, then deal with the repair whenever you have an evening free.

Fineness is what you are matching

Wool label numbers are not marketing. The rule on the labeling of very fine wool sets out what the Super numbers mean, and a product is mislabeled if it does not meet them. Super 80s requires wool averaging 19.75 microns or finer, Super 90s requires 19.25 microns or finer, Super 100s requires 18.75 microns or finer, and Super 110s requires 18.25 microns or finer, with the scale continuing upward.

For a mender that is a usable ladder. A fine suiting knit labeled with a high Super number needs a finer repair yarn than a chunky sweater, and if you cannot buy that fineness you can split a plied yarn down to it.

What 100 percent wool does and does not tell you

A label reading all wool or 100 percent wool is regulated but narrower than it sounds. The rule on the use of the term all or 100 percent permits those terms where the product is composed wholly of one fiber, and gives 100 percent recycled wool and all recycled wool as valid examples alongside 100 percent wool. It also allows the term where there is fiber ornamentation not exceeding 5 percent, provided the phrase exclusive of ornamentation follows.

So 100 percent wool covers both new and recycled wool, and those two behave differently under a needle. If the label says recycled, buy new wool for the repair.

What not to buy yet

Knitting needles, a swift, a ball winder, and multi-color yarn packs. None of them is needed to darn a hole, and each is a purchase that makes sense once you are knitting rather than repairing.

Buy after you have looked at the garment, since the repair sequence tells you which support and which needle you need, and knowing whether the yarn is reclaimed or new decides how much yarn to buy.

Common questions

How much yarn does a repair take? Very little. A palm-sized darn uses a few yards. The problem is never quantity, it is matching.

Can I use embroidery floss on a sweater? For a deliberately contrasting visible repair on a sturdy knit, yes. It is cotton, so it will not felt or move with the wool around it.

Is there a substitute for a darning mushroom? A smooth ball inside a clean sock works well and costs nothing. What matters is a firm rounded surface with no rough edges.

What if the garment yarn is thicker than anything I can buy? Hold two strands of a finer yarn together. That is closer to the original than one strand of something too thin.