I have just sent half the garden

down the laundry trough. The water was a deep, muddy brown. If there had not been washing powder in it as well I would have saved it and put it back on the garden.
I did manage to rescue the gardening garment - jersey, pullover, jumper, sweater or whatever. It is a garment. My father has a number of these garments some in better states of disrepair than others. They were knitted by my mother from odd balls picked up in charity shops, on sale at one of the department stores (in the days when department stores sold knitting wool), and from the left overs of other family knitting. The stripes do not match. There are (horror of horrors) pink stripes in the one I washed. It also has blue, brown, grey, a strip of red, yellow and ochre. There is a patch on the front where he caught it in some machinery in his woodwork shed. I made the patch and it does not match of course. The cuffs have been reknitted (grey again but a different shade) by me.
This morning he is wearing the 'mostly blue' one. That has felted in places and there are holes in other places. There is a 'mostly brown one' and another truly horrendous multi-coloured affair.
My mother gave no thought at all to their looks. She merely knitted something that fitted - sort of.
He will not give these things up. They are warm and, at 86, he is starting to feel the cold at this time of the year. It does not matter if he gets dirt, glue, woodshavings, sawdust, fertiliser or paint on them. If they catch in twigs or on the machinery he assumes I will be able to do a repair job.
The other thing of course is that my mother made them.