Thursday, March 5, 2009

Knit Six Rows and Remove 4 Rows...a Learning Experience


Over the last two weeks or so, I have been getting up really, really early. Like 4am or 5am. Like clock work. I've been picking up a knitting project and will knit for an hour or two until the rest of the house stirs from their sleep. That's one nice thing about knitting and using bamboo needles, it's a quiet hobby.

Well, this morning, I may not have been fully awake. (It doesn't help that I stopped drinking coffee, 1 year and 3 months ago). I picked up my shrug project and just continued K1,P1 where I left off the night before. I knitted six rows only to find that a few rows back, I messed up my "ribbing" pattern on the side of the shrug about an inch into the garment. It was quite noticeable.

What do I do? I quickly grabbed a stitch marker and hooked it on the last stitch of the last good knitted row. Then I had two options to fix this problem. One was to work my way back, undoing one stitch at a time. Well, that would have been 81 stitches per row and 4 rows to undo. Not a good option. My 2nd option was to pull my needles out of the garment and gently pull the yarn until it stops at the stitch marker. I went with the 2nd option.

I laid my garment on my rug and proceeded to pull the yarn out. Once I got to my stitch marker, I grabbed my needle and gently inserted the needle tip into the loops of my garment. Thankfully, I have been studying the way the loops look on my needles as I have been knitting. It was a slow process as I had to keep the threaded loops close to the tip of my needle and not stretch the loose loops from their stitches. Five minutes later, I had all 81 stitches back on my knitting needle. Only one loop was twisted, but I was able to fix that when I got to that stitch.

With each project I knit, I am being challenged to learn something new. I have to say that while I had a slight panic attack, it was well worth the effort to fix it and tuck this learning experience under my belt.

I'm happy to say that I've re-knitted the 4 rows without any problems.


3 comments:

Trina said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Trina said...

Congratulations on surviving your first frogging experience!!

So do you get up that early especially for the purpose of knitting, or is that just your natural sleep pattern now? I'm jealous that you've found that extra free time!

(sorry, I had to fix my spelling!)

2BSewing: said...

Trina...thanks. So, that's what frogging is all about! I guess I couldn't hear the "ribbits" as I gently pulled the yarn across the garment. :)

It's a natural sleeping pattern. I'm an early riser. I don't want to admit it...comes with age. LOL!