more yarn problems

Saturday night I was working on my Swallowtail shawl for the HPKCHC (House Cup game on Ravelry). It's an "OWL" project, so I plan to use 800+ yards -at least 2 of the 4 skeins I have of a certain fingering weight yarn - to make an extra-large Swallowtail. Anyways, I was working a wrongside row - purling across - not pulling hard on the yarn at all - and the yarn just broke on me:



Note that aside from a slight puffiness on the ends, there is nothing remarkable about this spot in the skein that should cause it to break.
- It wasn't an especially thin spot in the yarn
- I was exerting unsually little pressure on the yarn, since I was just purling across by rote & not doing fiddly lace
- there are no knots or anything in that area of the skein

The yarn just broke in the middle of my purl stitch. I had to tink (is it lrup if you are un-purling?) back a few stitches to make sure the end didn't unravel.

I'm up to repeat 9 of the Budding Lace Repeat of the Swallowtail, and am reluctant to continue this project - it's much too much work to knit an 800+ yard shawl if it's going to fall apart on me at the slightest provocation!

Gryffinitter gave me some good advice via email, and I plan to show the shawl to her and to Rachel at Panera tonight, to see what they advise. Most likely I will be restarting in a plied yarn, as Gryffinitter told me that plied yarns are stronger. However I think the deadline for making changes to OWL projects was 10/15, but maybe they can make an exception for me? Sigh.

My poor shawl: