Monday, December 19, 2005

Can I have a do-over, please?

It's the final week before the big day and my Christmas knitting is so far on track. I am down to picking up the stitches on my first project and given that I have to be in the right mood to deal with that, I started my grandma's neck cozy. I got 1/3 of it done last night, when I realized that the "5" on my needles stood for "mm" not needle size. I had gathered up the needles, yarn and pattern for this project late on Wednesday night and apparently I was already half asleep. Assuming (remember what they say about assuming things?) that I had gathered correctly, I didn't bother to check that I was using the right needles for the project. As I was finishing the 3rd inch of the main portion of the cozy, I started thinking that these needles seemed pretty fat for 5s. I contemplated just continuing but there was no way I would have enough yarn with that much of a needle difference.

What was most painful is that I had already performed the needle gymnastics necessary to create a slip through area for the other end of the cozy by splitting the stitches from one needle to two, knitting up two sides in pattern and then rejoining them. I'm a firm believer in karma and apparently knitting karma is faster acting than normal karma. The big head I was developing at having achieved this feat for the first time was quickly and efficiently smashed down to size no more than 30 minutes later by realizing my needle mistake.

I couldn't believe it! I was going to have to start all over again. B helped me rewind my yarn as I frogged and decided that the momment needed a little theme song to which he promptly began singing the sweater song from Weezer…"If you want to destroy my sweater…"

4 comments:

Mouse said...

I'm convinced that holiday knitting disasters are the worst because we already have so much on our plates and so little time that any error is a nightmare. Good luck on the second time around!

The Stitchin' Sheep said...

Don't fret, though, the second time on the smaller needles, it'll go a lot slower. Oh, wait. That's not very helpful at all, is it?

I liked the theme song idea, though. Maybe adopting yet another one for the reknitting part could spur you on.

knitzalot said...

Oh that sucks about the needles! That has actually happened to me more times than I care to mention.

Chris said...

Indeed, knitting karma is amazingly quick. Alas.