Repairing My Ten Stitch Blanket

Remember ages ago I knit a ten stitch blanket? I used 500g of Sirdar Denim Tweed I’d bought on sale and didn’t like when knit up, but poppy adopted it even when it was washcloth sized and so it became a dog blanket.  Cut to the end of April and poppy gave birth on it!   Five chewing puppies later and it ended up with this big hole! 

I had to wash it before I repaired it, so I undid some of the knitting around the hole and tied it all in a knot so it didn’t get snagged in our brand spanking new washing machine (for a yarn I dislike so much, it washes really well –several boil washes later and it’s not actually as faded as it seems in these photos).  Two hours and some fabric conditioner later and I shoved some needles through the stitches and began knitting up the long strand at one end.  I left a long enough strand for the cast-off and then put those stitches on a holder and switched ends.  There wasn’t as much to work with on this end so I joined some white acrylic and knit double with the old yarn for a few rows to try and make the repair a bit stronger. 

When both ends met, I used a three needle cast-off, (although it was more like a two needle and a holder cast-off!) which was made more difficult than usual because the first stitch of each row is a knit-two-together – this joins each strip of ten stitches to the last strip. All in all (not including the washing or the searching for needles I used last and holders and so on!)  The repair took me about an hour.

 

The important this is that it’s not going to come undone in a hurry - if this was something for a human I would have bit the bullet and grafted but thankfully my dogs aren’t so picky!