The merit of keeping swatches

Fixed a hole in my favorite cardigan

While washing some of my woolen garments for winter I was shocked to find my beloved Wollmeise cardigan with two holes and a thin spot on the collar. How can this be? I frantically searched my wardrobe for other signs of moth infestation but couldn’t find any. Which is good, of course. But what happened to the Wollmeise cardi? I really don’t know. Gourmet moths maybe only out for the finest Merino?! It seemed fine the last time I wore it but after washing it suddenly turned up holey 🙁 May didn’t like the washing machine. Now what to do?

I knew I didn’t have any of the original yarn left because I gave the left-over skein to my sister. But I knew there was a swatch somewhere in my binders with project notes. While I’m not the most religious swatch knitter ever I do so most of the time to calculate my gauge and do the sizing. As predicted I found the swatch tacked to my notes and it was quickly unraveled. I sat down and carefully retraced the stitches over a few rows – not so easy in moss stitch – to close up the two holes as invisibly as possible. And it worked quite alright. It’s not totally invisible but also not right in your face either. I undid maybe a third of the bind off row on the collar and replaced this one too to take care of the thin spot there. Steam ironed it a bit and now it’s as good as now. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen to more of my hand-knits.