Knitting In Public

We had a small knitting ’emergency.’

Remember these two little guys that went home together?

Well, boys will be boys and puppies will be puppies. The end result was this:

Ooops.

So I was asked if I could rescue this, since it is Sam’s favorite blanket. At the very least, could I keep it from unraveling more than it already has?

Yesterday, I spent my afternoon assessing the damage, determining what the pattern was, and how far down the damage went. I carefully unpicked the edge (wouldn’t you know it would be the cast on edge that was damaged), and determined the best approach. I unraveled back to the lowest point of damage. This resulted in 3 separate strands of yarn of varying lengths. There was definitely a measure of yarn that was entirely missing.

I admit I should have washed the unraveled strands so that they would knit up better, but I didn’t really think about it as I was knitting. I was rather entranced with how to put it back together, and how noticeable it might be.

This is the result:

What do you think?

The pattern ended with 10 rows of garter stitch. The blanket is worn enough and washed enough that the knitting is very even, and the garter stitch “bumps” aren’t really bumps but just horizontal lines. So far, I’ve been unable to make the garter bumps lie flat, there are thicker parts where the ends are for each of the 3 sections of yarn, and it’s a little uneven because I didn’t wash and relax the yarn pieces before re-knitting. But I think I got 8 or 9 rows of garter stitch out of it, and the width of the ends only differ by about 1/4 inch.

There were several snags in the body of the blanket. I smoothed those places out as well, so those areas look ’just like new.’ 

Overall, a pretty good surgery. I think the patient will survive with just a few scars.