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Monday, June 27, 2005

EEP!

We have house guests. Chatting and knitting at the same time led to this:

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Do you see it? The mistake in lace. Sure it's a simple lace pattern, but it is still LACE and an unpleasant thing to have to frog or "tink". There are a LOT of stitches in one row and the mistake was four rows back. I didn't want to "tink" it (un-knit one stitch at a time). I also didn't want to "frog" those rows (pull out the needles and rip it back) as the chances of me picking up all those "knit-two-together" and "yarn forwards" correctly was next to nil. I decided to do the classic dropping-several-stitches-down the necessary distance and then reknitting them back up correctly (why has no knitter yet come up with a cutesy, yet descriptive term for that maneuver?)

I was desperately afraid that I would make a mess of it. Before dropping the stitches back I took a very good look at it, analyzing where I had gone wrong and exactly how many stitches were involved. It turned out I only had to drop two stitches back, but they had to go down four rows to a place where I had knit several stitches in a row instead of doing a "P1, yon, sl1, k1, psso". The description sounds confusing and difficult, but really it wasn't. Thank goodness the alternate rows on this pattern are relatively simple....not straight purling, but no worse than a 2:1 rib.

All is well that ends well, and I have everything back on the needles and looking great. Onward ever onward. The push is on now to get this little baby outfit done before I am seduced by the arrival of this little temptress. My order was placed today. How long do you think I have before it arrives?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... might take 5 days, but I'd plan on 3, just in case, and fill in the gap with something easy like a sock or a felted bag, that can be cast aside and picked back up again without killing yourself trying to figure out where in the pattern you are.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the explanation of "tinking" heck, I am a professional tinker and I didn't know it! I am pretty darn good at frogging too. I always wondered what that meant. It is a small comfort to me to know that someone as adept as you can make mistakes and not be too shy to talk about them. I learn from not only my mistakes but others as well. I have learned so much about knitting from reading blogs.

The shawl looks very impressive. I am thinking of doing the Coming Home shawl over the summer holidays...in time for fall. It doesn't look too hard. I would probably prefer crocheting it, but I am not that good at crocheting so I am doing the knitting pattern...not quite the same as Martha's but still nice.

Suzanne

Maggie Ann said...

What a beautiful shawl....enjoyed looking at the other patterns on the link too. My guess is you have 7 business days. I like the fact that your blog is a teaching blog too, but most of the time, gulp...you are light years ahead of me, the occasional knitter.