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Annie Reneau

Joy

It's just sweater holes being mended by hand, but people can't look away

It's like watching a magic trick.

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Knowing how to properly darn holes in sweaters is a useful skill.

For most of human history, people had to make their own clothing by hand, and sewing skills were subsequently passed down from generation to generation. Because clothing was so time-consuming and labor-intensive to make, people also had to know how to repair clothing items that got torn or damaged in some way.

The invention of sewing and knitting machines changed the way we acquire clothing, and the skills people used to possess have largely gone by the wayside. If we get a hole in a sock nowadays, we toss it and replace it. Most of us have no idea how to darn a sock or fix a hole in any knit fabric. Unfortunately, it's far easier for us to replace than to repair.

mending a sock, darning socks, darning sweater, fixing a hole in a sweater, knittingMost of us don't darn socks anyomore.Photo credit: Canva

But there are still some among us who do have the skills to repair clothing in a way that makes it look like the rip, tear or hole never happened, and to watch them do it is mesmerizing.

Videos of people stitching holes in knit sweaters have gone viral on social media with millions of views on simple, 2-minute demonstrations. Why? Well, you just have to see it in action.

One video begins by showing a hole in a light pink knit sweater. Using a needle, yarn and a tiny latch hook device, the person demonstrates how to fill the hole to make it look as if it never existed in the first place. Putting a patch over a hole is one thing, but this is something akin to magic.

Watch:

- YouTubeyoutube.com

Wow, right?

Another video begins by showing a hole in a gray knit sweater, but this time a yellow yarn is used to patch the hole so you can see clearly what was done. It looks so simple, but you really do have to know what you're doing to make this magic work.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

What we're witnessing here is a combo of knowledge and experience in the fiber arts, of course, but what it looks like is sheer sorcery or some kind of really complicated calculus problem. Who figured out how to do this? And why is it so satisfying to watch?

"I watched this whole video and I still don’t know how you did that," shared one commenter. (Right?!)

"Hey that was pretty neat," wrote another. "Can you do the ozone layer next?" (Ha.)

"I could watch it a hundred times and still not be able to do this," wrote another. (Uh, same.)

"My toxic trait is thinking I can do this 😂😂😂," shared another. (Maybe after watching it two hundred times.)

Many people found it oddly soothing to watch, perhaps because seeing something being fixed is indeed satisfying and perhaps because it harkens back to a simpler time when people spent their evenings doing things like this around the fire.

The music helps, too. This video demonstrates three different ways to mend sweater holes and the piano practically lulls you into a meditative state while you watch. Is this fiber arts therapy for those of us who don't sew or knit or crochet? Maybe so. Whatever works, right?

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Kudos to those who are keeping these kinds of skills alive and sharing them with the world. We may not be passing this kind of knowledge down in most families anymore, but at least we have the internet to help us if we really want to learn it.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Animals & Wildlife

How were cats domesticated? Contrary to popular belief, it didn't start with the Egyptians.

Evidence of pet cats actually predates Egyptian kitties by 4,000 years.

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When did cats become pets for humans?

We're all somewhat familiar with the history of house cats, right? At some point in school, we learned something about how ancient Egyptians loved cats and viewed them as gods and that's how we ended up with Whiskers McFluff and Princess Meowface deigning to grace us with their presence in our homes. Right?

That was our understanding of cat domestication for much of modern history. But in the early 2000s, researchers found a burial site on the island of Cyprus that included the skeleton of a human, an offering of stones, tools, and jewelry, and a skeleton of an eight-month-old cat. The site dated to approximately 9,500 years ago—4,000 years before the ancient Egyptians had their feline gods.

egyptian cat gods, cat domestication, cat figurines, pets, pet catPeople often associate cat domestication with ancient Egypt. Photo credit: Canva

"The cat skeleton lay just 40 centimeters away," the researchers wrote. "Both the relative intactness of the skeleton and the surrounding sediment indicated someone had dug a small pit or grave, then placed the cat inside and rapidly covered it."

The cat showed no signs of butchering and it was lying in symmetry with the human, both of their heads facing the same direction, which gives more credence to the idea that the cat may have been a pet or had some kind of relationship with the person. (Today, Cyprus has more cats than people. That should perhaps serve as a warning.)

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

According to PBS Eons, today's domesticated cat—felis catus—is its own species that descended from another species, felis silvestris. A subspecies of felis silvestris from Africa is the direct ancestor of all domesticated cats today, according to genome studies. Those African wildcats can still be found in North Africa and Southwest Asia. They look a lot like house cats but are larger and have less variety in their coat coloring.

But how did we get from those wildcats to our dorky little floofballs? It turns out, we now believe cats were domesticated twice, once in Southwest Asia bout 10,000 years ago and again in Egypt about 3,500 years ago. Again, genome research indicates that the genes of two different source populations contributed to the cat gene pool at two different times and the archeological record also supports that idea.

cats, pet cats, grooming, kitties, pets, felinesadorable cats GIFGiphy

Evidence (and common sense) indicate that cats were welcomed by humans for rodent control, and that may be where domestication began. But we don't really know, and we don't know exactly when or where it began, either. The oldest evidence we have of cat domestication is from Cyprus, but that's an island. Who brought cats there? All we know is that people from Southwest Asia began to migrate to Europe in the Holocene epoch, approximately 11,000 years ago. Clearly, they brought our cats' ancestors with them. Were they already domesticated then? Were the cats just wild stowaways? Nobody knows.

But people are okay not knowing because it's far more fun to come up with jokes about how we've come to today's happy (and hilarious) alliance.

"Here kitty kitty"--Your ancestors 10,000 years ago."

"Meanwhile, cats are debating whether they have fully domesticated humans."

"I could well imagine a cat lecturing on how humans were domesticated."

cat face, cat domestication, cat ancestors, cat, animals, pet catsDid we domesticate cats or did they domesticate us?Photo credit: Canva

"Meanwhile in the Cat Universe: ‘How we enslaved humans.’"

"Kitties domesticated themselves. They saw a large warm cave with lots of food and a creature that would help it take care of it's babies, and was like 'I'm moving in, and I'll tolerate you, I guess' and humans were like 'you're fluffy and cute, okay!'"

"The greatest scam cats ever pulled on us was domestication and we fell for it TWICE."

"I have always considered that millenia ago, in some village somewhere, some lost kitten was crying mournfully, a toddler girl picked it up, it purred, and that was it, we were lost."

"Cat: mew

Humans: so anyway I adopted it."

cat, gif, pet cat, domesticated cat, cat videosWhite Cat Hello GIFGiphy

As Terry Pratchett said, “In ancient times, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.” It does seem like cats just decided at some point that they would allow us feed them in exchange for them letting us look at them and touch their fur. "We domesticated cats" feels like a bit of a misnomer, even if we supposedly did it twice.

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Pop Culture

'Wicked' author reveals how one line in 'The Wizard of Oz' inspired Elphaba and Glinda's story

Gregory Maguire says he "fell down to the ground" laughing when the idea hit him.

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Gregory Maguire was inspired by a line in the original 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. If you've watched "Wicked" and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie "Wicked" is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" written by Gregory Maguire. While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origins of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England, and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.


- YouTubeyoutu.be

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

This story originally appeared last year.

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Reproductive Rights

Why I'm morally anti-abortion but politically pro-choice and don't feel conflicted about it

Many of us find ourselves in the messy middle of the abortion debate.

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It's possible to be "pro-life" and pro-choice.

The legality of abortion is one of the most polarized debates in America. We've seen reproductive rights swing back and forth between the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 and the Dobbs vs. Jackson decision in 2022, with passionate people on both sides either lauding or lamenting the U.S. Supreme Court.

People have big feelings about abortion, which is understandable. On the one hand, some people feel that abortion is a fundamental women's rights issue, that our bodily autonomy is not up for debate, and that those who oppose abortion rights are trying to control women through oppressive legislation. On the other hand, some folks believe that a fetus is a human individual first and foremost, that no one has the right to terminate a human life, and that those who support abortion rights are heartless murderers.

abortion, abortion debate, prolife, prochoice, roe v. wade, dobbs decision, reproductive rightsYou don't have to choose between the extremes of the abortion debate.Photo credit: Canva

Then there are those of us in the messy middle. Those who believe that life starts at conception, that abortion isn't something we'd choose—and we hope others wouldn't choose—under most circumstances, yet who choose to vote to keep abortion legal with few restrictions.

Some people don't understand being personally anti-abortion but still wanting abortion to be legal, citing the moral conflict seemingly inherent in that equation. But I don't feel conflicted about it at all. Here's why:

There's far too much gray area to legislate abortion.

No matter what you personally believe, when exactly life begins and when “a clump of cells" should be considered an individual, autonomous human being with the same rights as a person not dependent on a woman's body for life is a completely debatable question with no clear scientific answers.

abortion, abortion debate, prolife, prochoice, roe v. wade, dobbs decision, reproductive rightsWhen life and personhood begin aren't easily answerable questions.Photo credit: Canva

I believe life begins at conception, but that's my own religious belief about when the soul becomes associated with the body, not a proven scientific fact. As Arthur Caplan, award-winning professor of bioethics at New York University, told Slate, “Many scientists would say they don't know when life begins. There are a series of landmark moments. The first is conception, the second is the development of the spine, the third the development of the brain, consciousness, and so on."

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that a human life unquestionably begins at conception. Even with that point of view, there are too many issues that make a black-and-white approach to abortion too problematic to ban it. Medicine is complex, and obstetrical medicine particularly so. It's simply not as simple as "abortion is wrong." Every pregnancy is personally and medically unique throughout—how can we effectively legislate something with so many ever-changing variables?

Abortion bans hurt some mothers who desperately want their babies to live, and I'm not okay with that.

One reason I don't support banning abortion is because I've seen too many families deeply harmed by restrictive abortion laws.

abortion, abortion debate, prolife, prochoice, roe v. wade, dobbs decision, reproductive rightsFamilies who wanted their babies have been hurt by anti-abortion laws. Photo credit: Canva

I've heard too many stories of families who desperately wanted a baby, who ended up having to make the rock-and-a-hard-place choice to abort because the alternative would have been a short, pain-filled life for their child.

I've heard too many stories of mothers having to endure long, drawn out, potentially dangerous miscarriages and being forced to carry a dead baby inside of them because abortion restrictions gave them no other choice.

I've heard too many stories of abortion laws doing real harm to mothers and babies, and too many stories of families who were staunchly anti-abortion until they found themselves in circumstances they never could have imagined, to believe that abortion is always wrong and should be banned at any particular stage.

I am not willing to serve as judge and jury on a woman's medical decisions, and I don't think the government should either.

Most people's anti-abortion views—mine included—are based on their religious beliefs, and I don't believe that anyone's religion should be the basis for the laws in our country. (For the record, any Christian who wants biblical teachings to influence U.S. law, yet cries “Shariah is coming!" when they see a Muslim legislator, is a hypocrite.)

abortion, abortion debate, prolife, prochoice, roe v. wade, dobbs decision, reproductive rightsThe government doesn't need to be involved in personal medical choices.Photo credit: Canva

I also don't want politicians sticking their noses into my very personal medical choices. There are just too many circumstances (seriously, please read the stories linked in the previous section) that make abortion a choice I hope I'd never have to make, but wouldn't want banned. I don't understand why the same people who decry government overreach think the government should be involved in these extremely personal medical decisions.

And yes, ultimately, abortion is a personal medical decision. Even if I believe that a fetus is a human being at every stage, that human being's creation is inextricably linked to and dependent upon its mother's body. And while I don't think that means women should abort inconvenient pregnancies, I also acknowledge that trying to force a woman to grow and deliver a baby that she may not have chosen to conceive isn't something the government should be in the business of doing. As a person of faith, my role is not to judge or vilify, but to love and support women who are facing difficult choices. The rest of it—the hard questions, the unclear rights and wrongs, the spiritual lives of those babies,—I comfortably leave in God's hands, not the government's.

abortion, abortion debate, prolife, prochoice, roe v. wade, dobbs decision, reproductive rightsAbortion is inextricable from healthcare.Photo credit: Canva

Most importantly, if the goal is to prevent abortion, research shows that outlawing it isn't the way to go.

The biggest reason I vote the way I do is because based on my research pro-choice platforms provide the best chance of reducing abortion rates.

Just after Roe vs. Wade was passed, abortion rates skyrocketed, peaked in 1990, and then plummeted steadily for nearly two decades. Abortion was legal during that time, so clearly, keeping abortion legal and available did not result in increased abortion rates in the long run. Switzerland has one of the lowest abortion rates on earth and their rate has fallen and largely stabilized since 2002, when abortion became largely unrestricted.

Outlawing abortion doesn't stop it, it just pushes it underground and makes it more dangerous. And if a woman dies in a botched abortion, so does her baby. Banning abortion is a recipe for more lives being lost, not fewer.

abortion, abortion debate, prolife, prochoice, roe v. wade, dobbs decision, reproductive rights, sex edComprehensive sex education and birth control are the proven ways to prevent abortion.Photo credit: Canva

At this point, the only things consistently proven to reduce abortion rates on a societal scale are comprehensive sex education and easy, affordable access to birth control. If we want to reduce abortions, that's where we should be putting our energy. The problem is, anti-abortion activists also tend to be the same people pushing for abstinence-only education and making birth control harder to obtain. But those goals can't co-exist with lowering abortion rates in the real world.

Our laws should be based on reality and on the best data we have available. Since comprehensive sex education and easy, affordable access to birth control—the most proven methods of reducing abortion rates—are the domain of the pro-choice crowd, that's where I place my vote, and why I do so with a clear conscience.

The polarization of politics has made it seem like the only choices are on the extreme ends of the spectrum, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can separate our own personal beliefs and convictions from what we believe the role of government should be. We can look at the data and recognize when bans may not actually be the most effective means of reducing something we want to see less of. We can listen to people's stories and acknowledge that things are not as black-and-white as they're made out to be.

An we can want to see fewer abortions and still vote to keep abortion legal without feeling morally conflicted about it.

This article originally appeared six years ago and has been updated.

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