A little repair work

I knit Happy Street, a shawl pattern by Veera Valimaki last October.  A well written pattern and a pattern that encapsulates Veera's style - simple knitting, stripes and short rows.  While not as popular as the ubiquitous Color Affection, Happy Street is an oft-knitted project.  As is common in 'top down' patterns I cast on just a few stitches and those early rows just flew by.  Once the 'short' rows begin though, I ended up with hundreds of stitches in each row. 

The pattern calls for 3 colours, each in 400m lots.  I looked through projects on Ravelry and realised that this wasn't strictly necessary, so I ended up using 3 skeins of Brooklyn Tweed Loft in Embers (burnt orange), Snow Bound (pale grey) and Old World (the navy), that I purchased in 2013 at FiberSpace in Alexandria, Virginia.

As many people have said, Loft is a fragile yarn - woollen spun, the loftiness of the yarn is very visible just by looking at a strand.  I was careful, winding the hanks into balls, and careful whilst knitting.  It was all fine until the final stretch of navy knitting, which I decided to do in a mesh stitch, rather than garter.  The navy just kept breaking so I had to pay close attention and knit very loose yarnovers.  Frustrating, but manageable.  I was also very cautious when washing and blocking the shawl.  After soaking it, I patted it out flat to dry - none of my usual aggressive stretching and pulling it into shape.

Other than knitting the border in a stitch patter, the other modification that I made was to knit just 9 stripes - because of the shorter yarn skeins I had - but the shawl is still a significant size. 

It's a scarf/blanket that I wear regularly - and apparently I also regularly catch it on things, probably the zipper on my coat.  As a result I've had to perform 3 repairs. 

Step 1 - I use a running stitch and work back and forwards along the tear.  I do this step multiple times, probably at least 4 or 5 times to make sure I catch all the threads.  

Step 2 - this is sort of wrapping.  I insert the needle from the wrong side, to the right side below the running stitch.  Then I pull the yarn up and over the edge and bring the needle back through the shawl, this time from right side to wrong side, always under the running stitch all along the tear.

It's certainly not invisible, but it hasn't affected the stretch of the shawl and looks quite presentable. 

I have resolved to be more careful, particularly as I only have a very small amount of each yarn left for future repairs.