Wednesday, May 1, 2013

AhHHhHhHhHHh!

Crap!

Yesterday I got to my 7th skein.  The afghan was long and cumbersome to knit.  It was exciting.  I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  All those sentences are sadly past tense sinceI found a mistake.  I think I got so comfortable with this 'easy' pattern that I didn't take the time to look at the work.  I just kept knitting and knitting and knitting.  And knitting.  I literally had to rip out over 12 inches of the freakin' afghan, which equals about 2 skeins.  I rarely have to rip mistakes out; I usually just tink (knit backwards) because I *usually* find the mistake within a row or two at most.  Usually.  I have no idea what I did.  I held my breath ripping that sucker out.  I suck at trying to put the stitches back on the needles since I think I've only done it twice  before, and it's been at least a couple of years.  This was one hell of a lesson to learn:  ALWAYS CHECK YOUR WORK EVERY FEW ROWS REGARDLESS OF HOW EASY THE PATTERN IS.  In the past, something like this would have put me off knitting for a while.  I guess this time I'm more addicted than I thought, because I'm still plugging along, although definitely grumpier.

In trying to find the silver lining of having to redo so much, I will say that I found three (!!!) knots in the 6th skein; two I cut out and treated it like changing the yarn, but the third one I didn't see until I was halfway through the row.  I was sick of the blasted knots and I just kept going.  The silver lining of the huge rip out is I ripped out that knotted part so it won't be in the afghan anymore.*  


*I would rather have lived with the knot than rip and re-knit.  AhHHHhHhHhHHh!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awww!

Fabiknits said...

I hate when that happens... Especially so close to the end. I hear some people use scrap yarn every few rows (especially with lace) to hold stitches in case they have to rip out. This way the stitches are hanging from the yarn and are easier to put back on the needle... I've never done it... It might be worth it for big projects, though. Hang in there, Buddy!

Neeners said...

Yeah, it's called a lifeline or something like that. I think my biggest mistake is thinking that since this was an easy pattern I didn't need to actually look at my work every once in a while. Painful lesson, for sure!