Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The knitting gods are laughing.....

Oh, long about 3 weeks ago I had one, ONE, forty-eight row repeat left to knit on my Hanging Garden Stole. As I mentioned in a prior post, I've been struggling with this for over a year. It was my first foray into more complicated lace, with lace-weight yarn. (Yeah, I did Branching Out, but it didn't seem that complex.)

Anyway, I'm in the last repeat...it's so exciting. Each row, I think, "last time for row nn", I was in the forties (going to row 55), and thinking I've finally got it, after 13 repeats! When I find that I accidentally pull a few stitches off my needle. OK, I take a deep breath, and pick up the stitches, or so I think. (Insert Jaws music here.) I knit another row, and damn, damn, double damn, triple damn, HELL, a hole has formed - IN MY LACE! OK, more deep breaths. I try to pick up the pattern, but it is beyond my skill. Here's the good news, I have a lifeline placed at row 40. So I thread a #1 needle through row 40, and pull back. Looks good. That is until I knit row 41 and notice ANOTHER hole. This cannot be happening!!

Again, I try to rework the pattern, but no go. You may not believe this, but I have a second lifeline placed at row thirty. For those playing at home, I am now pulling out over 10 rows, that I thought I'd never do again. You'd probably like photos, but I didn't have the heart.

Here's the kicker......I pull back to my LAST lifeline, and find that I missed stitches in that row too!! What the hell is wrong with me? I haven't needed to use the lifelines until now, the last repeat, and I can't even pick up all the stitches! Fortunately, I caught the stitches, got them back on the needles, and now I'm back to row 40.

I may not live long enough to finish this thing........

1 comment:

kemtee said...

At least you had the lifelines….