Sunday, November 20, 2011

What Not to Do Before You Have Coffee

I am making a cute little shrug for the Eldest Munchkin. Very simple raglan sweater. Loose gauge with aran yarn. I am adding sleeves. (Personally, I am not a fan of sleeveless shrugs. Though I have never worn a shrug as they would look terrible on me!)

I had finished the increases. Instead of binding off the sleeves as the pattern said, I put them on holders. All good.

Last night I discovered a whole in the back of the sweater. Not a missing stitch or anything. Have no idea what happened. It was too late to touch it without making a mess.

So I got up this morning. Feed the Little Guy. The Eldest Munchkin woke up so I got her up. DH was still sleeping. The Eldest Munchkin didn't want breakfast yet. So I figured she could hang out with LG and me in the living room. I decided to fix the hole.

I figured it would be simple enough to just drop the stitch to the row past the error. Then pick it up and move along. I realized I might also have to do that with the row next to the error to fix the problem. No biggie on simple stockinette. Or so I thought.

I did it once. Didn't look right. Watched a youtube video to confirm, yes, I did it correctly. So what was happening? Tried one more time. It looked far worse. With a sigh I resigned myself to ripping back the 6-7 rows to get past the error.

Rip, rip, rip. Back the hole. So time to get it back on the needles. Okay.

Did I forget to mention EM kept coming over asking "what are you doing?" and "can I hold that?". That being everything from the yarn to the project off the needles and in the process of being frogged to my notions holder to the Knitkit (which she wandered off with only to snap back the measuring tape causing more tears for the morning). The LG was fussing from time to time.

So it was about that time that DH woke up. He came out and EM of course says she is hungry. Much to his credit, DH scooped them up and took them out into the kitchen without complaint. Leaving me to try to sort out my knitting.

When I have ripped back, I try to put it back on the needles with a row of unknitting. Basically, I put each stitch on the needles and then pull the yarn out of the stitch so it doesn't cause a stitch to run. Works well...most of the time.

I am 3/4th of the way done with the row. Then I am struggling with one stitch. I am not sure why. Other than perhaps the lack of caffeine... I think I get it straightened out. All good. But now the yarn coming out of the side that is back on the needles. *blink* I am thinking it just must have been that last stitch. Right? Nope. Three more stitches. All in the wrong direction. *blink*

I sit there staring, trying to figure out what is happening.

Now a smarter or at least more caffeinated person than me would have put it down and walked away for some sanity. But I didn't. I tried pulling out the knitting needle only to have the cable pull out of the connector on my Knitpicks Options. *growl*

At this point I was so peeved that I just ripped out the entire thing. *sigh* Not sane. Not sensible. But it what I did.

I went out and had a nice breakfast with my wonderful family. DH listened to me complain about the knitting. He even said that perhaps I should get some knitting needles that are joined. I pointed out that the good ones cost about $10 a pop. So that wasn't gonna happen. I also said given how long I have had my Options that the fact that I have only broken about 3 cables is actually pretty good. Knitpicks is the economy version but overall they are pretty decent.

On KP, I also can't complain at all about them. I had trouble with their ball winder since day one. I finally managed to write them about it. They explained it shouldn't be functioning the way it did and immediately sent me a replacement! Given I purchased it from them at least a year ago, that was very kind of them.

So the lesson for today. No knitting repairs before coffee. Unless I really *want* an excuse to restart a project. *sigh*

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