Beware row six!
Or, more precisely, beware your assumptions about row six. There I was, delighted to finally be sinking my teeth—or is that my needles—into the lace section of this shawl. I’d quickly figured out that like most lace patterns, all of the wrong side rows are straight purling (except the border). So I’m gleefully watching The Daily Show, as is my frequent practice, and just as Jon Stewart launches into the interview I note I have just enough time to purl my way across a wrong side row. I turn my needles with Jon’s first question and purl my way across. Feeling cocky, I even flex my continental purl muscles to see if I can get across the whole long row without my left index finger cramping up from its continual dipping down. Success! Just as Jon delivers “tonight’s moment of Zen,” I finish off the row.
I lean over to the pattern to check row six off...and proceed to say some very unpleasant things I will not repeat here.
Row six, you see, asks you to KNIT the wrong side row. Had I looked, had I read ahead in the pattern like good knitters are supposed to do, I would have seen this crucial fact. Not ALL wrong side rows are purled in this pattern. Some rows—some very important rows—are knitted so that a lovely little ridge shows up on the right side to highlight the scalloped edge now forming.
Of course, this row sits on top of many, many yarn overs, making tinking very slow and mighty tedious. While it only took me about ten minutes to incorrectly purl this row, I took me nearly an hour to un-purl and re-knit the row.
You can bet I won’t make that mistake again—at least in this pattern! As for the rest of my knitting days, well, I suspect I’ll botch a few more wrong side rows before I learn my lesson.
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