Loose ends

The silver braid on my uniform jacket tends to fray. I went to fix it, but I didn’t want to unravel the whole thing so I went about it very carefully. There are always loose ends, and pulling one end of a thread increases tension on the other, and sometimes the weave, the warp and the weft, is so complex you just can’t be sure what the result of worrying an end will be. If I were to pull on the frayed threads, the results could be disastrous for my magnificent silver braid. First I pulled at it slowly, and it seemed to be coming out too easily, so I wrapped what of it I could around my forefinger and gave a sharp tug, and it broke off clean.
Oscar taught me a better trick for dealing with this, though. He showed me how to hold a flame close to the loose end and melt it down- the thread is synthetic material. The results of this operation are much cleaner than the other method, although holding a flame to one’s sleeve is never recommendable.