I've had a catastrophe. Nothing heart-stopping, and actually pretty predictable. See, I bought this glorious yarn and accompanying pattern at the yummiful Yarndale in the summer and at the time I was well aware that I was probably setting myself up for difficulties. For a start, it's not the bright, DK yarn I normally go for - it's a dainty little 4-ply. For a second, it's not a sturdy, simple knitting pattern - it's flouncy, patterned and complex. It's the sort of pattern that SHOWS if you've bodged it a bit. And I often do bodge things a little bit, if needs be. So I joked with Rachel that this project would probably not resemble the picture too closely, and would potentially take me a decade to finish, since I'd most likely get bored with the delicate fiddlesomeness of it.
HOWEVER, once my Blooming Flower cushion was done and dusted, I set to work and turned my beautiful skein of yarn into a beautiful ball of yarn. Well, two balls in fact, since it managed to tie a knot in itself only a short time in, so I had to start again. Grumble grumble. Ball rolling is DULL, even when the yarn itself is delectable! Anyways, I got it all rolled and last Tuesday, while Little R was napping I managed to cast on 144 stitches.
Then I tucked my project safely into my knitting bag and placed everything ready at the door for knit and natter. Warm clothes for the journey, Little R's bag with snack, water, toys, fresh nappy liners, complete change of clothes, wet wipes etc (you know - just a few basic essentials a toddler has to travel with!) and our two pairs of shoes (still adoring how tiny his shoes are next to ours!).
Then I waited for Little R to wake up. I waited... and I waited! Parenting truism: your child KNOWS when you have plans afoot and sleeps longer than normal just to throw said plans out of whack. That's why, when I bumped into another Mama on route, I was already FORTY minutes late!
Still, we did get there in the end and had a lovely time. I managed a whole round and a bit. Then, for several evenings I sat on the sofa, reading my pattern with care and mumbling under my breath as I knitted (slip, slip, knit together, knit TWO, yarn over, knit another TWO.... you know the thing). It just isn't as soothing to the mind as a simple crochet ripple or square. There's so much THINKING. Also, it makes it quite hard to follow whomighthavedunnit on Poirot or Midsomer Murders.
Unsurprisingly, what with all that whodunnit-distraction and fiddlesome-pattern-counting, the holes were not lining up in beautiful diagonal stripes as per the photo. I accepted that I am not a perfect knitter (nor patient and dedicated enough to rip out errors and re-knit them) so my cowl would simply be random in its holage.
I muddled along, TRYING to stick to the chart but feeling increasingly disappointed that NONE of the holes matched up. I don't know what made me count the stitches. Maybe it had begun to press on my consciousness that the rounds were taking quite a while. Maybe the needle was starting to feel a bit pushed for space. Whatever the reason, count I did, and I was astonished and perplexed to discover I had around two, three, possibly FOUR HUNDRED extra stitches. Perhaps more!
'Wow!' I thought to myself. 'It's an increasing pattern! I didn't realise!' I checked the pattern and read ahead a bit. No.... at no point does it say that you should have a different number of stitches. At no point does the pattern suggest that you decrease again. With a sinking feeling in my chest I looked back at the chart that I'd been following so religiously. I read it with fresh eyes. SKK TWICE. TWICE!!
Oh heck. See, I'd read ssk and skipped to their description to make sure I did the stitch exactly as stipulated, then I'd looked at the pictoral chart instead of the words to work out the rest of the round. And I had interpreted the \ \ to mean slip one, slip one, knit them together. When in fact it means do the whole thing twice. To me, that'd be \ \ \ \. But there you go. I was wrong. I mis-read.
Do you know that feeling? When you look down at four or five hours work and know the whole thing is irredeemable? It's a sad and frustrating feeling. It can induce BAD WORDS to leave the mouths of certain persons. On this occasion, though, I just felt a bit defeated. As I had suspected, I had messed this fiddly project up. So I packed my cowl catastrophe sadly into the cupboard.
The next day, I braced myself and got it out for some serious frogging. First though, Little R had to try out the bodged cowl. He just LOVES to wear things round his neck.
Of course, he loves yarn too, so he swatted my ball of wall. I swear, ALL he did was swat it. With one swat a whole bunch fell right off and tangled itself into a huge, inpenetrable knot. Witness my absolute incredulity as I looked at my yarn. HOW does he do it.
NB: that's only tiny portion of the knot - there was a whole lot more knot offscreen!
It was time for Big R to get involved. Big R is supremely talented at pulling apart yarn. By supremely talented, what I mean is she actually has the patience to do it, whereas I'd just hack it off with scissors (or my bare hands, depending how cross I actually was).
NB: How gorg do my yarny creations on the sofa look?!!! *swoooooon*
NNB: My wife was looking pretty gorg too, a mon avis *more swooooooon*
Once the giant-tangle-of-doom had been beaten into submission, it was time to frog. Rippit, rippit, rippit. It was rather theraputic, actually. Bit nervy, because I'd decided only to go as far as the end of the border, which I am pretty confident I did correctly, so I was being super carefully not to frog too far.
NB: the weird colours in the following photos are because we were still fiddling with the shutterspeed and exposure levels to try to get non-blurry photos.
Then I had the nerve-janglingly tense job of putting all 144 stitches BACK on the needle. Man alive, don't they just try to wriggle away from you and undo themselves. The evil sods cheeky monkeys.
Last job was a quick count up of my 144 138 stitches. It's ok, panic not! I found two of them and picked them up on one of my miniature padlock clips (so useful - I love them). And I found some dropped stitches that need tweaking. But there are, at last count, 4 stitches still AWOL.
So tonight I aim to find those missing stitches (or, I hope just count more carefully - maybe I missed them?) and to try again with the patterned bit. I am determined to complete this tricky unlike-me project this year. It's my resolution!
PS: SSK TWICE! That's one-two-TWICE!