Saturday, 3 January 2009

New Year, New old project

The lace stole continued apace on New Year's Day - I manged to complete four pattern repeats [total 48 rows]. I could see this project being finished on time.

Yesterday brought a whole new slant on the story. On New Year's Day I'd gotten cocky* - I waited 24 rows before inserting a lifeline. I knitted another six rows and whamo! I can't even remember now what happened, but I had to rip back to that lifeline! And guess what I discovered - lifelines don't always hold the stitches the way I knitted them - some of the K@ tog. had become two stitches. And when I tried to fix them [had to take the lifeline out to do so because it was understandably twisted in the stitches, I dropped some more stitches. I had to rip back to the previous lifeline 24 rows below [that's two pattern repeats folks!]

I heard that collective sigh but wait - there's more! Last night, having finally made up all the rows I'd lost, I looked down and, to my horror, found a huge hole just three inches from the start! At first, I thought the yarn must have broken but no, it was intact. It seems that sometimes have trouble with K2 tog. and one stitch doesn't get knit properly. Eventually, it drops and unravels - rows and rows! I was sitting looking at this enormous hole through tears, wondering if I could gather the errant stitches [now six from a secession of K2 tog.] with a crochet hook, re-knit them and secure them with a small sewn stitch when something caught my eyes - another gaping hole, another dropped K2 tog.!

Well, dear blogging friends, I tell you, I couldn't see any other way out - if it happened to those two stitches it could happen to any K2 tog. stitch and there are lots of them. It's for my daughter's wedding and I don't want a patched up mess! so, I did the only thing possible people - take a deep breath - I frogged the lot!!!

DD tried to talk me out of it - but I said I would do it and I've never been defeated a by knitting project yet! And I'm not about to start!!

Last night, at 10.30 I cast on a new old project - I am now six rows into the Myrtle Leaf shawl which I need to have completed and blocked in four weeks! I'm off to knit - if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm sure you know why!!

Happy "Long Lacy Summer" to everyone who's participating. See you in February!

*overly self-confident or self-assertive from Princeton Word Net Search

9 comments:

  1. Crying and Sighing with you.

    I know that you will finish it in time.

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  2. Oh, no. I think I'd have been in tears too, but I wouldn't have your perseverence. I'm an "if at first it doesn't succeed, give up" type of person

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  3. OMG, I was too scared to keep reading and almost did through gaps in my fingers. You poor thing.

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  4. Don't you let that lace get the better of you!!

    Sending lace knitting vibes your way...

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  5. Oh crap! Hope your replacement behaves itself for you!

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  6. Oh Lynne I'm so sorry to hear about the frogging - have you worked out what the problem is? I'd hate for you to get so much done and then find another hole. Wishing you the very very best in finishing it in time, I'm sure you can do it.

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  7. You did the right thing! Horrors aside-it needed to be ripped! you will do fine now........!

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  8. Oh dear! I've been doing some lace frogging myself this week so have some idea how you felt. At least I don't have a deadline to get things finished. Take care and take some breaks between repeats to help keep the brain and eyes refreshed.

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  9. I somehow missed this post.

    Oh Lynne. I'm sorry you had to rip it all out. Hang in there, you can do it!

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