Bombs Away

I mentioned I really want to get my new shawl done by May 7, right? Well, I’ve been making pretty awesome progress on it. The thing consists of five striped sections and five lace sections. Earlier this afternoon, I was purling away on my last row of the third lace section. I might have been congratulating myself a little on having gotten so much done while simultaneously anticipating the welcome boredom of approximately 15 million miles of garter stitch looming on the horizon.

You can probably see where this is heading.

I’ve been very careful with the lace bits. Usually with lace I separate the repeats with stitch markers, but in this pattern the repeats are offset (so it’s a little trickier). Instead, I added a stitch marker on each RS row to separate every five or six repeats. Then, on the WS row, I’d count the number of stitches between each of the markers to make sure it was a multiple of six, and remove the markers as I went. So, I knew at the end of each WS row if I was on track or not. If my count came up wrong, I could more easily pinpoint where the error was. I inserted lifelines every six or eight rows, which I’m guessing is a lot compared to other knitters. I just figured it would make things faster if I did need to rip back at all.

So, maybe I lulled myself into a sense of lace security. I had lots of fallbacks in place in case I made a mistake by miscounting, forgetting where I was in the pattern, forgetting what row I was on, etc. It never dawned on me that I would drop stitches. Well, on that last purl row, I looked down just in time to see one little highlighter yellow stitch dropped, pulling out of the stitch below it in slow motion. I made a quick grab for a teeny crochet hook I had nearby and scooped the sucker up. I reknit it and put it back on the needle, then futzed around with the neighboring stitches to make sure everything looked right. It did and I carried on my merry way.

For about two stitches. Then, looking at the rows below the previously dropped stitch, I saw this:

Eeek! The three stitch markers in the background are securing other unravelled stitches that showed up as I stretched the piece a bit. Somehow I must have dropped more than one, or caught it later than I thought. Either way, a good bit of damage was done.

What to do? I ran another set of needles through the knitting where my last lifeline was (eight rows back, sob). You can sort of see it in the pic. I’m debating on using the Yarn Harlot’s nifty repair technique versus just ripping eight rows out. Thoughts?

Whatever I decide, even I’m not crazy enough to try it until I have a chunk of toddler-free time combined with full daylight. In other words, I’m losing a ton of knitting time tonight, which seriously bums me out. Time to cast on something new, perhaps?

On an unrelated note, the stripeys are enjoying the sunshine:

Happy knitting!