Surgery at 30,000 feet
By JC | March 7, 2012
It’s been a couple weeks, but I still have a story to share from my trip to Stitches West.
Stitches was fabulous, as usual. A real highlight was getting to see the projects in Betsy Hershberg’s new book, Betsy Beads. Jeez, now I have a hankerin’ to knit some beaded I-cord…
But the story in question takes place before Stitches itself. Remember how I said the shawlette would make for better airplane knitting than the Swirl? Well, after boarding my flight to San Jose, I pulled out the shawlette and settled in for a pleasant hour-and-something of knitting. And then I discovered The Goof.
Right as the plane was pulling back from the gate, I noticed a yarn over where it didn’t belong. It was near the start of the shawlette, before I’d properly memorized the stitch pattern. I had put a yarn over where one didn’t belong… but I’d also put in its matching decrease, so the stitch count wasn’t off and I didn’t catch The Goof when working the following row.
What to do? Several options ran through my head:
- Ignore that pesky misplaced yarn over and get on with my life – no-one would ever notice it. Yeah, but I would know it was there.
- Rip out and start from scratch. The shawlette was still pretty small at that point; I would only lose a few hours’ work. But I didn’t have any waste yarn on hand to re-start with a provisional cast-on. So I wouldn’t get to knit on the plane – bummer! And unless it’s absolutely necessary, I can’t stand the idea of starting over from scratch.
- Rip past the misplaced yarn over, and re-start from there. I would lose at least three-quarters of what I’d already knit. And without a lifeline in place (or the tapestry needle and waste yarn needed to install one after the fact), it might be a little fiddly. Still, it was a viable option. But there was one more option to consider…
- Drop back and re-knit. Hmm. Could this work? The stitch pattern has a repeat of 12 stitches, but one of every six stitches is always a plain knit. That is, all the lace patterning takes place within groups of just five stitches. So I would only need to drop back the five stitches of the group with the misplaced yarn over. The catch? I’d have to drop them back a good 24 rows. And re-knit them with just the needles on hand, without any help from spare dpns or even a crochet hook.
In the end, I went with option #4. I figured that if the dropped stitches created an intolerable, unruly mess, I could always fall back to option #3, or even option #2.
And guess what? It wasn’t that bad! Yes, the dropped stitches created an unruly mess of loose strands, but dealing with them – carefully re-knitting those five stitches, one strand at a time – was tolerable. And it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it might: I finished before the flight attendants managed to get the drinks cart to my row, leaving plenty of time to make forward progress on the shawlette.
And since then, I have made decent forward progress:
gettin’ bigger! even if it looks kind funny while unblocked
Soon I’ll need to figure out what edging I want. If I’m smart, I’ll put in a lifeline first, so I can easily try a couple options.
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