Slowly and patiently.  Repairing an oriental rug so badly damaged, and of relatively little value, is perhaps a ridiculous thing to be doing.  Every few weeks I get around to doing a fair piece of it; for awhile I was bogged down in fiddling with an interior section, but right now I am recreating (essentially free-hand) an entire end with three sections of patterning.  It is a thought provoking experience.  I don’t think that we do enough work with our hands these days; it is so easy to simply go buy a new rug and done.  The material object is devoid of any meaning, the process is devoid of meaning  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t sometimes just buy a new one, and certainly being able to simply run out to the store is an awesome choice.  But I am not sure that time spent hand-making something is necessarily lost time.  This rug, I know the physical value of it as opposed to simply the monetary price tag.  As I work on it I have plenty of time to think, but you can’t be angry or tense.  It isn’t nearly as bad as working with animals, but if you’re tense than the thread tension is wrong and that won’t do.   Most people could do with that sort of hand work…

Being a perfectionist and working by hand does slow one down a bit.  If three inches have to come back out because you didn’t get it quite right, then three inches have to come back out.  There’s no compromise on getting it right, either it is or it isn’t.  Right doesn’t have to equate to perfect, because ‘perfect’ in this case would be ‘new’.  Right this instance not only includes the stitching, the colors, the tension, and all that, but also the age, previous repairs acknowledged and either removed or worked with, usually both.