When you find a hole in your favorite sweater, it's a shame to let it go to waste. If you take a few minutes to mend it, the sweater can last years and years longer. But where do you start?

There are a few different ways to mend a hole. Depending on the size of the hole and your skills, you can choose from different techniques to fix the sweater.

Small holes can be mended using the duplicate stitch technique. This involves making rows of stitches that look like spokes in a wheel, going through the hole and the adjacent yarns. You can also do a bridging stitch, where you make a row of stitches across the hole and then weave it into the surrounding fabric. Both of these methods are easy to learn and fairly quick to execute.

If the hole is larger, you might want to try the replicate stitch or the kitchener stitch. These are two of the most commonly used mending techniques for knitting. In replicate stitch, you mimic the structure of the sweater by making rows of stitches that look similar to those in the rest of the knitted fabric. Then you can sew them together. If done correctly, these rows should not be visible from the outside of the sweater.

The kitchener stitch is a little more complicated. You stitch around the edge of the hole, then you pass the yarn through the stitches at either side of the hole and pull them tightly together. This will pull the holes in both sides of the sweater closed, preventing them from expanding in the future. You can do this for the entire sweater or just for a section of it.

Regardless of which method you use to mend a hole, the first step is to get the mending yarn ready. You should have a small amount of yarn in a color that matches your sweater. This yarn should be thin enough that it will not show through the fabric, but thick enough to keep its shape. You can get it from a local yarn store or at a place that sells sewing thread.

Once you have your mending yarn, you can begin the process of repairing your sweater. It's important to work on a clean area of the garment to avoid causing further damage and to make the repairs as neat as possible. You should also be sure to secure any loose ends of the mending yarn before you leave the stitch.

If you don't have the skill to do it yourself, there are mending shops that can do the job for a reasonable fee. Alterknit in New York, The French American Reweaving Company in Boston and Without a Trace in Chicago are all good places to find one. They can also do more advanced mending techniques, such as the use of the darning mushroom, which makes the repair even less noticeable. They can even rework the neckline of the sweater to make it more flattering.