The Angst of Knitting

The sleeve is progressing. Not, however, without some backtracking. Yesterday evening was particularly bad.

First, I had it in my mind that I was increasing until I got to 194 stitches. I did so, and began the first row of notes thinking to myself, "Wait a second - 194 isn't divisible by 12. 192 is!" And so I looked at my notes for the pattern, whereupon I discovered that 192 was indeed the magic number I was aiming for. I made the virtuous decision not to simply 'lose' two stitches in the current row, and frogged back four rows. That gave me the opportunity to see how the sleeve fit the sleeve opening - my silver lining - and it did indeed fit well. I got my stitches picked up on 000 needles, and began reknitting. Except somehow, I managed to put a fleck in a wrong spot. And after that, about 17 flecks went into a similar misalignment. Ick. Since I'd had enough of frogging, I decided to fix the stitches on the next round. I knit so quickly, though, that I was past them before I thought to look for them. And so it was the *next* round that saw me with wrinkled brow peering closely at my knitting. As the corrections went on, the brow became more wrinkled, especially when I realized that my first 8 fixed had a twisted stitch in the first corrected loop. Double ick. I still maintained my aversion to frogging, though, and fixed THOSE stitches with a crochet hook on the next round. After some simple rounds of black - during which I made no errors - I started in on the notes pattern. All went well, until I got to the second line of the second set of notes.

Double argh. I started the pattern one space over from where I'd started the white notes. No frogging, remember? I worked the whole second round slowly, swapping colors into the right places as I got to them. Let's see ... 192 stitches, or 32 note repeats. Two stitches to change per repitition. So I re-did 64 stitches ... that's still a large savings over tinking! Still, after that row, I put away my knitting for the night.

There's less than an hour of knitting until I can delicately cut open a steek, pick up 192 stitches around the opening (evenly spaced, of course) and put the sleeve on the sweater. Right side up, please. One sleeve, one neck, a scant two dozen ends, and the sweater will be MADE! Almost definitely before the Knitting Olympics are over. I'm starting to feel like the end to Master Knitting Level III is in sight. I have no delusions that all my swatches will pass, and I'm sure I'll miss a typo somewhere ... but still, once the box is out the door, I will be free until it comes back.

Free, that is, with respect to knitting projects that I have started and have yet to finish. Unfree, however, with respect to the list of things I am going to make/have promised to make/wish I could get the time to make. Still, those too shall pass, and they're a whole lot smaller than Level III *and* they have no paperwork.

Speaking of the Olympics, Torino would love to have the snow outside my window. I'd offer to send it to them, but that sort of thing doesn't work, and I rather like having a white view outside my window.