Blue

As I was rummaging through projects this morning to take photos, I noticed a striking similarity.

Really, I’m generally more eclectic in color choices than this would lead you to believe.

From the top: Baktus, in a lovely merino silk blend DK; Evenstar Mystery Shawl; and my latest spinning project. This is Yarn Chef fiber, I’m too lazy to get up and find the band, but it’s a silk blend of some sort. I’ll post more about it some other time.

I had a little dust-up with those two knitting projects the past few days, both stupid bone-head knitting mistakes. Making an error and having to tink back on a near-cobweb weight shawl is a little more understandable, at least. I got stuck on one patterned row where the stitch markers shifted one stitch sideways all along the row. On one repeat my count was off. I counted, recounted, tried to figure out where the error was, and finally tinked back the whole patterned row, then back the preceding plain knit row until I got to the repeat where the count was off (almost all the way around the row, I might add). By the time I got it tinked back, the count was now right. I counted, recounted, said a few choice swear words, and proceeded forward again, holding my breath and counting every single blasted repeat as I went. There was no error, I just think I can’t count. Or perhaps one of the stitch markers had migrated temporarily under a stitch. Or who knows, the Knitting Goddess might be trying to teach me a lesson. There wasn’t even bourbon involved in this one, I swear.

The blue scarf mistake is really bone-headed, though, almost enough so that I don’t want to put it out here for all of you to laugh at me. I figure it’s my civic duty, however. If you click on over to the pattern, you’ll see that, after the initial set up rows, it’s a simple 8 row pattern repeat. Simple, simple, simple. I got 24 repeats done correctly earlier this week, did a couple more repeats, then picked it up to knit again yesterday. The repeat basically is the lace yarn over row with 3 garter stitch ridges in between. On the last two repeats, there were only 2 garter stitch rows. Damn. Out it came, and I reknitted another two repeats, and noticed that I still only had 2 garter ridges. Out it came again. I’m embarrassed to say that I did this drill one more time before I figured out the mistake.

If you’ll look at the pattern, the last two rows, rows 7 & 8, are plain knit. Because of the way the pattern formats, it printed out on two pages, with rows 7 & 8 on the second page. You can see where this is going, can’t you? I did the first 24 repeats with all 8 pattern rows, then inexplicably just changed the pattern to a 6 row repeat, omitting those last 2 rows. I figured this out last night during about the quintillionth NCIS rerun I watched, at about 1 AM, and just cracked up. If I was Tony DiNozzo, Mark Harmon would have smacked me hard on the back of the head. It’s now fixed, and I’ve hand-written those last two rows on the first page so the pattern is all together, and hopefully I won’t do that again.

It’s late, I’m off to bed. I’ll try to find some other idiotic knitting goofs to regale you with next time!

Author: Lorette

My name is Lorette. I learned to knit in 1999, and took up spinning in 2009. I'm a physician specializing in internal medicine, and live in the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy my blog! View all posts by Lorette