Brassica Shawl from Mosaic Yarn Studio--Day 4

A tale of woe...

Oh, DestiKNITters.

I have such a tale of knitting woe as will break your yarny hearts.

It is a classic tale of pride before a fall.  Not at all a Valentine’s happy ending.  In the romance genre there is a term called “the black moment” where all seems lost and the hero realizes how much is at stake and what it will cost him to win the heart of his love.  

If there are black moments in knitting, this one qualifies.

Yesterday, I drafted a blog post about my finally reaching “that magical place where the decreases begin!”  I gleefully typed passages such as:

You can look at the row below and easily know where your yarn-overs, sssk, and knits should fall.  This not only means a lower blood pressure and no need for aggravating life lines, but it gives a knitter the ability to catch an error quickly because things won’t line up if you’re off a stitch.  I like that in a pattern.  Nothing ruins a lovely night of knitting like having to rip out multiple rows because an error went uncaught.

Oh, how I am choking those words down for breakfast this morning.  Don’t ever, ever…EVER…put claims like that out into the world.  Save yourselves.

After typing aforementioned post draft, I shot this photo of the lacework section of this shawl with all 100+ rows completed.

And noticed Something. Was. Horribly. Wrong.

While individual stitches did line up, somehow I managed to lose stitches over the course of those rows and ended up with one side narrower than the other.  

Noticeably narrower.  Like 25 stitches narrower.  Like unfixably noticeably narrower.

For about five minutes, I considered multiple ways to save it.  Nada.

I had no choice.  Last night I gritted my teeth and ripped out 104 rows of lacework.

Six days of work…poof.  There isn’t enough chocolate in the universe, even on this chocolate-laden holiday.

Feel my pain.   Count your yarn over holes every few rows.  Save yourselves.  Me?  I'll be hunched over my knitting.