fix the code move to load_vcs

In the move of code from load_bit_by_bit to load_vcs some functionality broke.

That particular block of code used 'item' and 'self' to refer to an item, and the containing directory respectively. After the move, item should go to 'self' (in the new context), but then we need to pass the old self as a 'parent' argument to load_vcs.