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July 21, 2005

They're Mad Again

The knitting gods are pissed at me again. There's really no other explanation. Ok, there is one other explanation - the Lotus Blossom Shawl is cursed. Take your pick. The results are the same. Here's the deal. Last night I got home and decided that I'd fix the stitch 25 rows down where I only picked up one strand of yarn.

So, I decided to be extra cautious and practice on one of the swatches before I attempted the shawl. This went well. I figured out how the yarn overs on either side were supposed to look and how to pick up the ladders in the correct order for the center stitches.

Armed with my crochet hook and a couple of dpns, the fix went off without a hitch. That was the last thing all night that went right. I know you're getting tired of hearing me bitch about this shawl, and I'm really tired of bitching about it, so I'll keep this brief. Because really, how much can I expect you all to handle. At some point something happened (and honestly I don't remember exactly what it was) and it required this:

(Thanks Cyndi for the how-to tip)

There was crying and screaming and cursing involved with the first attempt, but I figured it out (although I think I could have maybe taken half the shawl out and reknit it in the time it took me). The really good news is that this same activity occurred another two or three times throughout the evening. So, it's now about 11:30 and I'm really tired and I want to stop, but I can't just stop in the middle of a row. I'm on the last row of the second chart - actually on the wrong side row after the last row on the cart - just purling along and I feel one of my stitch markers hit my leg. I look down and think to myself, "How'd that get off the needle? It must be broken." Oh no, it wasn't the stitch marker that was broken. It was the needle. The bryspun needle just broke at one join.

As I'm sure you can imagine, this resulted in about 20 stitches jumping off the needle and yarn overs and stitches running willy nilly down the shawl. I really almost lost it (I was too traumatized to even take a picture of the disaster). I wasn't even pulling on the cord, I had lots of stitches on the needle and the cord was just hanging there - and at some point it just snapped off. Luckily I had another size 8 needle to transfer the stitches to, but it took me another hour to get everything transferred and the dropped stitches picked back up (I actually had to do a repair like above). So, you decide, have I angered the knitting gods, is the shawl cursed, or am I just the worst knitter on the planet?

On a happy note, I finished the second chart (finally) and counted the stitches. I have the right number! Please take a moment to really understand the implication of that statement. After all of the crap I've gone through with this stupid shawl, I have the right number of stitches. That means I got all the yarn overs and decreases right! That realization required a happy dance this morning, such that it was after 4 hours of sleep. Chart 3 is the same pattern - the stems - and is only 14 rows, so I really should be able to handle it, assuming I can pull my head out of where ever it's been the last few days.

Have a good day and happy knitting. And as always, thanks for listening.