My dog ate my knitting! No joke.

Tragedy struck my house about three weeks ago. Well a tragedy in the knitting world anyway! I had gone away for knit camp, where I was away from my home for five days. After I walking back through my door, I quickly dropped all of my knitting items and took my dogs outside to wear them out from being locked up all day. The next morning I discover that I had not dropped my knitting in a safe place…. Apparently one of my dogs was rather upset with me for being gone for five days, and took out her displeasure on my knitting. The damage I discovered is pictured above. I knew I had to at least try to save it.

A couple of things ended up being in my favor:

The section that she attacked was done in a simple linen stitch and not complicated lace.
This section also used yarn that I had dyed myself. While I didn’t have any left of that exact batch, I had about 60 yards left, undyed, from the cone that I had wound off of. Sometimes those little left over bits come in handy! I dyed it up the colorway used for the shawl… but it came out darker than the original. I was determined though, to save this shawl!

First, I needed to stabilize the stitches.

I had to stabilize the stitches before doing any repair work, to ensure that no more unraveling would occur. I did this by weaving in some waste yarn, inserting the needle through the left leg of the stitch, two to three rows above and around the hole.

Then I inserted a working needle, in the same size that I used for the pattern, into the bottom-most whole stitches. Also pictured here, you can see I stabilized the torn stitches that make up the edging with waste yarn.

I created a small patch in linen stitch to cover the whole. Using the bottom-most whole stitches as my first row of live stitches, I worked the stitch pattern flat. I did secure the first row of the pattern patch by knitting the right leg of the stitch closest to the hole together with the first stitch of the patch. I repeated this once I got to the end of the patch, by knitting the last stitch of the patch with the left leg of the stitch closest to the edge of the patch. Make sure to do this with whole and secure stitches.

Patch has been knit. Now to bind off and secure.

Patch is bound off, leaving a long tail.

Using the long tail and a tapestry needle, I worked some duplicate stitches over the bind of edge to secure the top of the patch, but also to make the stitches appear to going the correct way. This could also be grafted if you did not want to do duplicate stitch.

Turn the shawl around to the wrong side and weave in the ends to secure the broken edges of the hole. This will give the edges some strength. I wove the ends in across the patch as well, adding more strength to the weak spot.

Ends are all woven in! The patched area has been strengthened and reinforced. The waste yarn has been removed from around the hole.

Now to see how the patched area looks from the front….

The patched area from further back. It’s not terribly noticeable!

Not too bad! It’s not super noticeable and much better than frogging the whole shawl.

I hope my patchwork helps you out, if you find yourself in the same sad tragedy or something similar. Now the edging… I think that will require some short rows, so I’ll return with part 2 on fixing that area. I highly recommend to visit this site https://afulltable.com/, you will need some tools to fix this!

Comments

Peggy says

November 3, 2019 at 4:49 pm

Did you ever figure out how to fix the edging? I am a new knitter. My dog ate the end of my scarf I was working on. I can’t seem to upload the picture. She chewed a few rows of the beginning of the knitting but the rest of the scarf is in tact and I am almost done. I have no idea how fix it. Wondering if you figured out to fix your edging?

- Stephanie Showalter says
  
  November 3, 2019 at 5:12 pm
  
  Peggy,
  I do think I know how to fix mine. I havent gotten around to it due to several festivals and big restocking of colorways. However, I just finished my last festival for the year, so maybe I’ll be able to do it this week. For mine, I’ll believe I’ll have to do short rows. I believe you can attach pictures to an email sent to me, you can do that through the contact section. Send me a photo of your scarf and I’ll see if I have a suggestion for you.
  
Lorann says

October 8, 2021 at 2:28 pm

So glad this was just a minor mishap. My 2 year old Yorkie, Dolce, got into my yarn and ended up eating 38 feet of yarn from a work in progress, which led to her painful death . By the time we figured it out, the surgery was too late. Please keep your yarn away from restless pets!