A Christmas Stocking disaster - and the resolution

Riley, my son's dog, strikes again.   This is the same dog that ate the edge of Alexis' blanket when she was a puppy.  This time she targeted Carl's Christmas Stocking.   I think she was intrigued by the buttons that embellished the snowman, because she basically ate his head!

There were two of the 'mouth' beads left out of the five that were the mouth and eyes, so at least I can put eyes back on, and the metal carrot button the was the nose is more or less intact.  It's scratched up a bit, but still useable.

The yarn is a standard worsted weight single by Brown Sheep Co - a semi-local mill and is in stock over at the Yarn Barn of KS.  Road Trip!  I'll need one skein of the blue and one of white and just a tiny bit of black for the hat.

The plan is to run a lifeline just at the bottom of the top (name) band in the last row of red, drop off the bottom of the stocking.  Then rip back to just below the "neck" row, reknit the damaged area, kitchner stitch the top back on and then add the snowman's head and hat back on with Swiss Darning, and put back the eyes and nose embellishments.   I've done similar 'sweater surgery' before and it works out fine.  Any knitted item that's made of stocking stitch can be cut apart and reknit in either direction.  Only works for plain knitting, though.

Monday 12/22  

Materials acquired.  The gals at the Yarn Barn were so nice; they even found a scrap of black, so I didn't have to buy an entire 190-yard skein for the twenty or so Swiss darning stitches I need for the top hat!   The blue is only off by a dyelot difference, so if I pull back two or three intact rows and knit it up striping the old and new yarns, it should trick the eye into blending the two very close shades.   It's only when there's a stark dividing line that dyelot changes get problematic. 

Lifelines run and starting to pull out the damaged section.  We are at the 'it looks worse before it looks better stage".

I'll keep updating this post as the repairs continue.