The Mother of the Mother of Repairs

Surprisingly enough, the big repair at the base of the triangle was not that difficult to do.  Really, it just needed some patience to make sure I was tracking the knit stitches carefully.

 

The real problem happened when I went to graft the edges together.

 

Sigh.

 

I had done one repeat in a contrasting color to facilitate the process.  Time, handling and the microscopic nature of the work would prove counterproductive to that idea.  My next best plan was to carefully cut that contrast yarn off, feeding the live stitches onto a needle as I went. 

 

And it would have worked....

 

Had I not accidentally snipped a stitch as I cut away the contrast yarn.

 

I had a really bad moment when I realized what I had done.  After all, it's one thing to rip back from the top of a piece of knitting - the stitches pull right out.  When you are trying to rip out from the bottom, though, you quickly find a snarled mess as the stitches are locked together.

 

Yep, it was a really bad night.

 

Ultimately I pulled myself together and picked out as much as I could so that I would have a tail long enough to weave back in.  I had fortunately left a yard long tail on the other end, and so I was able to knit in the three rows on that piece that I had removed from the other end. 

 After a good night's sleep I had a plan...and the pinning began. I removed the nice side from it's needle, pinning each stitch as I went.

 Then I pulled the mussed up edge to it and did my best to approximate where all of the stitches were.  After that it was a matter of creatively seaming it all together.

And I kinda can't believe I pulled it off.

 

Nope, it's not perfect and if you know what you are looking for/at you can easily see the problems.

 

It is, however, pretty damn close.

 

I once spent a good 30 minutes describing in great detail to a therapist my frustration over the fact that I had spent three days trying to fix a mistake in a lace shawl, ultimately failing to put it entirely to rights.  She asked two questions.  One, was the mistake easily visible?  No, it wasn't...not at all actually.  I doubted anyone would ever notice it.  Two, would I ever be able to accept a compliment on the piece without pointing out my mistake?  Uh...negative, probably.  (And in fact less than a week later I caught myself responding to a compliment with a 'thank you, but if you look here you will see that I messed up' before I even knew what I was doing.)

 

Point being...that's not going to happen here.

 

I am DAMN proud of myself for fixing that mistake, and THRILLED with the work I did to blend it in.  No one will EVER notice it, and I will NEVER bring it up again.

 

I guess this old dog has learned a new trick after all.