Fucking Up

Nobody wants to fail, and yet we all fail at something at some point in our life. I fail all the time, every day, at something. Mainly I fail to live up to my own expectations. Unfortunately, I also often fail to admit to my failures, therefore making the emotional fallout much worse than it would otherwise be. Since I could use some practice in the area, I thought that I would disclose ten previously undisclosed knitting errors.

1. The Manly Sweater: I purled a stitch that should have been knitted on the back right shoulder of the sweater. I didn’t notice it until I had knitted many more rows, so I never fixed it. I still see it when Stephen wears the sweater.

2. Falling Leaves. I neglected to read the entire pattern, and failed to realize that the chart only showed every other row (the non-charted rows being knit rows) so that when I was knitting the first sock, I knit every row in the chart pattern, omitting the "all knit" rows between. I didn’t fix it because I didn’t want to have to tink back six rows. Yes, I’m a dumbass for not realizing that something was wrong sooner.

3. Flower Basket Shawl. When I was knitting my FBS I discovered that the mistake I make most often with lace knitting is that I forget a yarn-over. It’s easy to do, because it doesn’t disrupt that pattern row (unlike forgetting a k2tog for instance.) That means that whenever I forgot a yarn over I didn’t realize it until the next row, when I was one stitch short. Unfortunately I had not yet discovered the beauty that is dropping down stitches in lace and reknitting the pattern correctly. So, instead of really fixing those missing yarn overs, I simply added them in later on when I discovered the fuck up. As you can imagine this means that if you were to study my FBS you would find errors. Lots of them. For the record, I did tink back and fix lots of mistakes too.

4. Best Friend Bags. On one of the Best Friend Bags I decided at the last minute to slightly modify the pattern, after I had already bound off the ends. On one of them I got the bright idea to try to undo the Cast On end. You all know where this ends. You cannot undo a cast on end. It does not work. So I ended up doing some Very Bad Things and then just barely being able to put the Frankenstein Monster that I had made out of it back together in such a way that it didn’t look like dog barf. The horror! I take comfort in the fact that both grandmothers are rather near sighted and hopefully will never know. (I really can’t believe that I admitted doing that.)

5. Lotus Blossom Tank. Aside from the sizing issue (which I have already disclosed) there is one other mistake that I never talked about, but is visible in the pictures of it. On the left side of the tank, where the chest joins to the sleeves, there is one stitch that became very, very loose, and now forms a sort-of-hole in the fabric. I don’t know why this happened. This, of course, did not show up until after the tank was fully blocked.

6. Rib and Cable Mitts. When I made my Rib and Cable Mitts I inadvertently made one of them longer than the other.

Okay, I only found six undisclosed errors after going through my blog archives. That isn’t to say that I haven’t made any other errors (because I have) but I have either: disclosed those errors, fixed those errors, or can’t remember them. So there you have it. Is there anything you would like to admit to?