I joined a KAL in Socknitters Forum to knit the Omelet Shawl from Summer Knitty. It is a beautiful pattern and pretty straightforward to knit. Not too difficult if you just watch what you are doing and put in frequent lifelines. I did pretty good on the lifelines for a time, then got to thinking that I knew what I was doing and didn't need to put them in as frequently. WRONG!!! I had to rip back about 19 rows to fix a major mistake. I had dropped a stitch when tinking back a double centered decrease. There is just no way that I can pick up dropped stitches in lace. Maybe when I have knit lace for a few hundred years I can do it, but right now I cannot. So frogging took place.
After I frogged I could not find where I was in the pattern. I had written down that I had lifelined in row 9 of Chart B, but that just did not work with my stitch count. Instead of simply reading my stitches I kept counting them and trying to make them come out. After about 2 days of frustration I decided to read the stitches and found that I had actually lifelined on row 19 not row 9. So I finally got back to it.
Ok, that was fixed and I was off and running again, putting in lifelines like a good little girl. Again I got cocky and would do about 15 rows before a lifeline. Again tinking back I lost a stitch but this time I only had to tink back about 2 rows instead of ripping.
At this point lifelines were going in about every 5 rows and sometimes even sooner. It seemed I was spending almost as much time doing lifelines as I was knitting. That was ok because I did not want any more major reversals.
Finally got the thing all knit and bound off and was ready to block it. I hate blocking so I waited a day or so but finally decided that it was time to just go for it. So I soaked it for a bit in some Eucalan and then wrapped it to press out excess water and blocked it.
The shawl is supposed to have all these little points around the bottom. Guess what? I had bound off so tightly that mine did not. Ok, no prob. I like it just as well with a straight botton. After blocking it out and being happy with the way it looked I left it alone to dry. I went back to check it and found that I had broken the thread in one place on the bind off. Dang!! I waited until it was totally dry and unpinned it and tried to fix it without taking the BO stitches out. Didn't work. So I had to go back to the last stitch bound off and undo it. Luckily the thread broke about 16 inches from the last stitch so it was not the large of a deal to undo it. I got to where I need to add the yarn in and start my bind off again and found that I was knitting the bind off even tighter this time so I had to tink it back again and came up with a modified crotchet binding off stitch that seems to have worked just fine. I also was able (hopefully) to find all the little lost stitches that popped when the thread broke and fix them so that it looks fine. You can see where the fix was made but it is not a big "in your face" fix so I will take it.
Here it is unblocked http://flic.kr/p/9VLBdZ and here it is blocked http://flic.kr/p/9VPsCo
This will have to do for now.
Soon as I can get pictures to load I will put them on here. Not sure if my connection is too slow or what but it says they are uploading but then nothing shows.
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