Things hit a snag or oops

A not so funny thing happened. . .

It's a small alpaca shawl that I designed and knit before the fall.

It has been sitting in cold storage for some time waiting for the right publishing opportunity.

Recently a good possibility turned up.

In a best foot forward moment, I thought I'd give it a bath and block before sending it off.

While the alpaca got a nice long soak in the sink, I cleared a blocking board, covered it with the "I don't care if the dye bleeds" towel and dug out blocking wires and T pins (never enough T pins for some reason).

I managed to thread the blocking wires through half of the still sort of sopping shawl, pinned it out and was about to thread the second half when I saw this little surprise.

Initially I thought the break was in one of the lace motifs. Further examination told me that if that was the case I'd made a glaring knitting error and somehow managed to overlook it through repeated blockings -- unlikely but possible.

Once it was completely dry, I discovered that it was in a solid knitted part of the piece and not in a bit of lace. Further, I found another very short end hiding just next to the lace motif in the upper left part of the picture.

Two broken snippets that might measure 3/8 of an inch in length and an orphaned loop to work with in effecting a repair. Is it any wonder I let it sit a bit before dealing with it?

It doesn't look like critters and since it was in a solid area it probably wasn't a victim of aggressive blocking although alpaca is weaker when wet.

My current theory is that it snagged on something at some point and that weakened that particular bit of yarn just enough to snap -- sigh.

Extra sigh because I have no yarn to spare to repair it unless I want to unravel a "gosh gauge really does matter" test piece.

It got an inelegant but effective repair, another soak (eau de Eucalan) and is again on the blocking board with a combo of 300# fishing line (love that stuff), blocking wires and T-pins (seriously, never enough of these).

Thankfully I was just being paranoid/delusional/just seeing things when I thought I saw another unintentional hole in the piece. It really was just a previously woven in end that had worked its way loose.