Tale of Two Shawls: Part 1

KAL Mystery Shawl is now revealed as Polaris.

OWS (Oslo Walk Shawl) re-visited.
As I spent my first evening on the couch after 3 weeks of toddler activity, I began work on the Polaris above, examining each stitch, looking for those pesky dropped stitches, or worse yet, a stray yarn over.  Four weeks had passed since I blocked my OWS and discovered a hole MID-CENTER.  I don't know how it could have escaped me until after binding off and blocking!  OK.  Maybe I was a tad excited to finish...  Here's the last blog about it, carefully avoiding mention of a hole:  Blocking link
I've admitted it to all my groups:  Knit night group, exclaiming it won't be noticed when it's around my neck, and I "could" take another piece of yarn and tie it closed, or something.  I even proudly showed it off to my knitting classes to demonstrate that 'stuff happens' and it's not the end of the world.  So there I was: At the end of the world.  And that night I chose to DO something about it.
First I spent a half hour with yarn and needle, trying to make it look, well, ... er,... perfect, and surprise!  It didn't.  Then I took a crochet hook and tried to create an extra stitch from the hole all the way down to... it wasn't pretty.  After an hour of head scratching, I resolved it would have to go.  I picked up a row of stitches below it and bravely pulled out the bind off edge.

I knew what I was getting into:  Short rows are worked into that whole "yarn over" section, and I was ready for much more tink'ing and almost certain frogging the whole project, but I persevered!

One side was indeed not on the same row, so hours later I was satisfied I had found a place to begin.  I re-read the instructions and started to knit, and this was the result.

I commented to a friend how horrible my stitches looked compared to the evenness of the blocked part, and she, insightfully, asked if I had used the same unraveled, blocked yarn to make those stitches, and, of course, she's right. The yarn was trying to hold its shape from the previous knitting. But there's NO HOLE in the center panel.  (Cheering!)

It blocked out nicely, and, AHhhhh, all is well with the world.

 No, Susanna, I didn't frog the 'whole' thing to capture the beautiful points at the bottom (cast on) edge.  And the beads (green) show up very noticeably in real life.

Meanwhile, I found a pesky dropped stitch in my Polaris...  better keep looking for more!