Four thousand, eight hundred and seventy five. That's approximately how many stitches I "frogged" yesterday.
Eleven rounds. Over four hundred stitches each round.
And not because of an error but because I changed my mind! (It's a women's prerogative.)
One could argue that is was an error in planning since I had not thought far enough ahead to realise that merging a twelve-stitch pattern into a ten-stitch pattern wasn't ideal. It didn't look all that bad but the mathematical side of my brain (or the compulsive side) wasn't thrilled.
So I ripped back.
Without a lifeline.
Because I had thought I wouldn't need one (how the proud are fallen!). To my immense thankfulness, the task wasn't as difficult as I had imagined and there was no reason to resort to tears and no temptation to say something I shouldn't.
Usually when I rip back (such as with socks that rarely go over a total of seventy-six stitches), after picking up stitches, I have to tink back a few more rounds or rows to get all the stitches and find where I'm up to in my pattern.
Not this time. I did have to slip the whole round of stitches and pick up several yarn overs that had been dropped and there was one dropped stitch that had to be picked up (one out of four hundred and twelve isn't bad) but, overall, it was, to my incredible surprise, a rather easy though time consuming task.
Which again filled me with thankfulness. Imagine tinking four hundred stitches! I can't. It doesn't bear thinking about. (For those not in the know, "tink" equals "knit" backwards which is what you do when you undo one stitch at a time by slipping the needle into the stitch the next row/round down and then gently pulling the yarn until the existing stitch comes away. It's effective in its place, but can be rather tedious and was not something I even contemplated for almost five thousand stitches.)
After adjusting the pattern from ten stitches to twelve and charting and writing it all out again, I was ready to start knitting again. I'm already over halfway back to where I was before I ripped back.
And did I put a lifeline in?
Let's just say, my pride is greater than my wisdom! (Actually I hate lifelines and have almost as much trouble getting the stitches off the lifeline than I do if I just rip back and pick up live stitches.)
Hopefully I won't regret it.
 |
Comments