How To Fix A Hole

Several years ago, I made a beautiful Feather and Fan shawl. To my great dismay, I discovered a tiny hole in it after blocking. I suspect pet toenails, although I have no proof. It was horrifying, but hardly anything to cry about. Knitting is knitting, after all, and the beauty of it is that it's infinitely fixable. (We'll not discuss the three years it took me to get around to fixing it....I'm such a process knitter....)

I thought it might be fun to track my progress as I fixed the mistake, so here it is!

Find the mistake. Locate the tiny skeins of leftover yarn that you've ingeniously held onto for all of this time.

Take a deep breath, and then make the hole a lot bigger.

Spit splice in some new yarn.
And then get a royal headache while trying to darn the mistake. If the actual word 'darn' - or something stronger - comes out of your mouth while doing so, don't fret. This is quite natural.

For eventually, you will close up the hole - even if it means carefully grafting two rows when you find that the hole had weakened the yarn just below the initial damage. Don't look too close. I'm sure that it's not quite right - but it's right enough to call done!Wash and reblock.

And enjoy your shawl!

I actually gifted this to my grandmother for Christmas. Gram's been doing plain feather and fan afghans for years and years*, and when I chose this pattern I did so for love of the way that it played with that old, old pattern. Gram loved it, and appreciated the work involved. In our family, knitting equals love.

*I don't really think Gram knits much else. We were delighted when we found a picture of Mom's first birthday and realized that Gram was working on a feather and fan afghan in the background!