Cold to the Bone

I was chilled yesterday, to the bone cold and I could not seem to warm up.  I was sitting in front of a heater at the time, but it didn't seem to help.  On the shelf in front of me was this sweater.

Brian wore it a few times watching TV.  He said it was too hot for anything else.  He took it camping and a large spark flew to where it lay on a chair, and burned through it in several spots.  It lay on the shelf waiting for repair ever since. 

I debated tossing it, but it, oy, all that work.  That seemed like such a waste.  I thought about recovering what good wool I could.  The arms, the body below the armpits.  These were good.  It was only the top that would have been scrappy and largely unrecoverable.  I just never got round to that.  It stayed on the shelf and waited.

I was cold, so I put it on.  It became apparent pretty fast, that if I was going to wear it even a little, I had to do something. The holes made the knitting very unstable.  

So I pulled out the left over yarn from making the sweater and did some quick and dirty repairs.  

The two spots which were just singed were repaired with a little judicious duplicate stitch.  I can see one more row needs work in the second picture.

The other two were big.  Great big.     

Like I said.  Big.

I was never sure what I was going to do with those.  I often thought the only repair would have been to knit a patch leaving long ends at the end of each row, that could be woven into the fabric.  And yes that would work, but the idea seems pretty daunting.  

And that is why it sat on the shelf.

Anyway, after repairing the socks, I thought in for a penny, in for a pound and did these.

 The first, fell conveniently between two sections of garter stitch and the patch fit comfortably along the edge of the sleeve seam.  It fits pretty well and I am, more or less pleased with it.

 the garter stitch patch worked less well.  I needed to pick up stitches to start a row lower than I did so that the garter stitch worked better on the right side, and I needed to do and extra row of garter stitch.  Plus, I forgot to do a  purl rather than a knit two together at the one side for those garter rows.  And then to finish off, I made the graft too tight.

So many flaws, but the knitting is stable and the sweater is once again, usable.

I am warm and am cozy wrapped in the memories of summer camping. That counts for something in the middle of a Canadian winter.