Builds character

It’s been really bugging me for a week now that two-and-a-half-year-old Parker didn’t have his blankie back right away. I wanted it right out the door the next day and it just didn’t happen–I kept wrestling endlessly with how to find the most perfect way  to bring it back to its former glory. Overthinking. Using the shawl-knitting time to chill out about it, hoping that would get me back to it.

Rip it and knit it again, was one friend’s take.

I considered. It’s near the cast on.

So to take the easy out with that I would need to cut it off at the end of the tear and carefully undo two rows’ worth: if you’re frogging knitting from backwards, you have to pull the entire undone length carefully through the last loop of each row, it doesn’t just keep coming freely at those points like it does going the other way. Then I would use that two rows’ worth to cast off above the break, the blanket much shortened. Then I’d undo the original cast off at the other end and continue knitting on with the cut-off yarn.

That way I’d be ripping out a third+ rather than nearly the whole thing.

I kept picturing myself driving easily a hundred miles to get to all the local Bay Area stores that carry Malabrigo in hopes of finding a close-enough match to replace whatever might be too broken to work with.

And maybe I should have. But I decided to at least see first how it would look if I went for a simple repair. I spread the much-loved blankie out on the floor with the former loops now crossing the gap side-t0-side pulled a bit to straighten them out, and with a crochet hook caught each one on up, loop by careful loop in stockinette mode: plain, no dragonskin pattern.

Got all done, turned it over to the back to check–and there was a whole group of strands that had been caught sideways and upwards about ten rows’ worth. How on earth did THAT happen?

So I partially undid and tried again.

Well, it’s better…

Tomorrow, with a little more light again and a little more energy again, I hope to close the gaps, fix the last errant loops, and get it off to the post office.

Or maybe I just needed a break from it for a little while before trying to finish it tonight. So I came over to the computer and typed this.

Oh and. My Cooper’s hawk flew in while I was fussing over the whole thing and there it was!  A U-turn just past the birdfeeder, wings and tail spread wide, maybe a dozen feet away. Wow!

Just can’t growl at wool when the feathers fly by like that.