However, I did something that was not entirely well-considered. I wore a lovely lacy shawl and a shoulder dragon at the same time. Somehow, a thread in the shawl tore, creating a hole.
If this happens to you, what do you do?
First, do not panic. That does not mean do not react. Strong language is acceptable in this situation. But you do not want to react in a way that makes the situation worse.
When I discovered the tear, I took off the shawl, gently wadded it up, and put it in my suitcase. I did not want to stretch it, which could make the hole bigger and encourage even more stitches to run. So first thing is: do not make the situation worse. As you can see, I added some pins to hold stitches. This prevented stitches from running farther and creating even more mischief.
I waited for a quiet morning after a good night's rest. Then I set about the repair.
I was fortunate to have a little of this mohair lace yarn still in my stash.
There's a good reason to keep a few yards on hand for any project you make
that gets regular use. I also hunted up the pattern. I took a few minutes to
review the pattern and chart. I needed to get my head back into what I had
done.
I laid out the shawl with a black handkerchief behind it. This gave me a nice clear view.
Then I figured out which way was up. That may sound silly, but knitting tends
to ravel down not up. And I needed to know which way matched the lace
chart.
Then I sat and looked. This is not a step to be rushed. For an onlooker, it
would have appeared I wasn't doing much. Instead, I was carefully observing. I
could see the damage. I could see the pattern repeat elsewhere in the shawl. I
could tell what should be there. I could also see the advantage of a
well-blocked shawl. The memory of the stitches was preserved in the shape of
the strands. These shapes gave clues to how much the fabric had or hadn't
raveled. When repairing, the shape of the yarn gave clues to when the repair
was accurate.
The top of the motif has converging diagonal lines formed by knit-3-together and slip-slip-slip-knit. These are double-decreases with obvious leans. The broken stitch caused the sssk line to run. Additionally, those decreases were only worked every-other row. That meant the stitches needed to be picked up as a left-leaning three-together, followed by a single stitch on the next row.
I used a row of pink crochet cotton to stabilize the stitches. This also gave me a clearer sense of where in the pattern the break occurred.
I carefully picked up the raveled decrease line using a small crochet hook. Keeping the knitting on the table and supported was important. But, that also made it a little more difficult to maneuver the crochet hook. Patience is key when attempting this type of repair.
While knitting prefers to ravel downwards, it can ravel upwards. In this case, it had. After repairing the bottom half of the break, I took a lunch break.
Fixing the top involved more staring and thinking. Eventually, I decided it made more sense to my mind to look at it upside down, since that's the way it raveled. This pattern was particularly challenging because the increases and decreases distort the rows of stitches a lot. Some stitches almost disappear behind other stitches. After careful consideration, I was able to return the top stitches to their original configuration. The bends in the threads were very helpful!
The last part of the repair was replacing the broken thread. I used a short length and grafted the hole closed in pattern. The row happened to line up with the nupps. That worked out great! I duplicate stitched the grafted thread over to a nupp, then tacked it into the nupp using a sharp needle. I repeated the maneuver in the other direction.
The final repair can be found, but only with careful observation. It isn't
noticeable when the shawl is worn. The mohair yarn has enough stickiness I
expect it will behave itself. A little hot steam set the repair thread into
its new configuration. Success!
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