A Christmas present no one else she knew could give
Sunday December 07th 2014, 11:18 pm
Filed under: Family,Knitting a Gift

A snag on a favorite sweater that dropped the stitch almost the whole way down the armscye. A Christmas stocking handknit by my niece’s grandmother (or maybe great-grandmother) that their dog had gotten into.

My sister-in-law doesn’t knit but she knows I do.

So here are the two arms side-by-side afterwards. I was working up the purl stitch on the left closest to the seed stitch area.

Except that when I started I was doing it stockinette side out rather than purl side and I had to drop it back down again and start over.

If you look down to eleventh row above bottom left, you’ll see where I goofed–I needed to have dropped back again to one stitch more than I did: there’s a knit where it should be a purl, and I didn’t notice till I had sewn the last, topmost stitch up with a bit of matching silk and tied it triumphantly off.

Given that I couldn’t entirely see the tiny stitches half the time and dropped individual ones repeatedly, we’ll just take that one knit one there as a kind of proud signature.

Then I tackled the dog-clawed: with a matching white yarn (yay stash! Oh wait–I know it does in artificial light, didn’t test it in sunlight but that’s as close as it was going to get, and yes, there are many versions of white but it felt like I matched fiber content too so it should stay matched) I first connected all the open loops top and bottom, making a square, and then I tried to reroute back up the various loops complete with my strand still in the uppers and lowers as reinforcement.

The first area looks very good, the second one, which had more damage and didn’t still have the sideways bars to work with (I should have made some, in retrospect) looks repaired. But it’s repaired. And it certainly passes the galloping-horse standard. (If you can’t see it from…then don’t sweat it.)

And now it has love for the young woman whose name is knitted into the cuff of it from a second woman joining the original knitter.

Tiny stitches, slippery yarn, slippery overly-reflective metal darning (because we’re too polite to call them d**#!ning) needles and a death grip on such–but I did it and it is done and it is deeply gratifying to know mother and daughter will have those home in time for Christmas.

And that it’s all over with.


3 Comments so far
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I have never before responded to your blog; thought a great time to start is by wishing you happy holidays. And telling you how much I enjoy & appreciate your steady stream of sharing. One of my two best. (And I guess since you knit, you know who the other one is, even tho’ she’s on the other side of the continent.)
Keep up the great work!

Comment by Dee Jochen 12.08.14 @ 7:29 pm

Bravo!! What a very kind way to use your talents. I am amazed that my great aunt’s – no, another one – talents still stand the test of time in my fancy, beautiful stocking. I need to knit one for the Knight… maybe next year?

Comment by Channon 12.08.14 @ 8:51 pm

I love the idea of the mender adding his/her love to that of the original maker. Mending as love – sounds so much more appealing than mending as task.

Comment by twinsetellen 12.08.14 @ 9:03 pm



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