Jon's Knit Blog

Alchemy

The alchemy of the knitter's art was in full force tonight at Casa di Jon Blog.

You see, I finished square number four:

Looks perfect, almost? No? Well, let me tell you something about square number four. Dear ole' foursie.

Up until this evening, square four had a few challenges - a series of mis-crossed cables, and some openwork that maybe didn't quite go the right way. But there was a rhythym and everything seemed to be in place.

Up until this evening.

Then all hell broke loose.

I was knitting along, and then I realized that a stitch had somehow gotten dropped. Not just any stitch, but the one on the outside of the "pretzel" of the cables. And it unravelled down six or seven rows. And being the knitful alchemist that I am, I laddered it back up where it needed to be.

Then I knit another couple of rows. And then I realized that something was wrong: I only had three purl stitches in a spot where I was meant to have four. I didn't see any dropped stitches. Probably because I didn't have on my "crafting" glasses (they're pink, you know). So when I was on the reverse side of that row, I found the dropped stitch. But somehow, when I was trying to get it to go back up to the right spot, I ended up with this:

I couldn't even begin to know what was going on here.

But, thanks to the strategically placed stitch markers between the patterns, one of which (stitchmarkers, not patterns) was borrowed from the intrepid Miss Em, I figured out how many stitches I had dropped. And I found every single one of them.

And I did this:

Then this, which involved a rather odd approach to cabling:

And when I got to this point, where everything was right and all worked back up to the row I'd been on when hell had broken loose anyhow, I went to the kitchen and got this:

And even after my reward, I still ****ed up the pattern: I forgot to cable over the faggoting. But I realized that on pattern row 9, when the cross was meant to be on row 7. So guess what I did? I ladder-dropped the stitches down only on those four stitches, and worked them back up - with the cable cross in there - and everything was right with the world.

Now go back to that first picture of the square. Can you believe it? Neither can I. Give me some lead, baby, 'cause we're turning it to gold!

Posted by Jon at September 14, 2005 02:45 AM