looking ahead and knitting back

By now, you probably know that Phil (the groundhog) saw his shadow and that we can expect six more weeks of winter.  Not that this should come as any surprise, do the math… It’s the 2nd day of February, when have you ever known winter to be OVER in New England before the middle of March.  In RI I’d say, April, in Vermont, hey, the snow melted out around my place May 9th last year, and later the year before.   Given that.. I’d say little Phil is doing us a favor.  Statistics show that he’s only been right 39% of the time, of course… and then there is the question…which Phil?  hmmmmm….

Tuesday night I worked on my MH sleeve using the spread shit sheet that I made earlier.  I found all (I think, this is vers.2) the mistakes I had made, like not noticing that the pattern had a 26 row repeat.  Small things, really.  I found them as soon as I got to the row to knit, so it did all make sense.  On my bureau In a file, I found a ‘key’ to some of the Aran stitch patterns used in this sweater.  I was saving it for something.. who knew? 
The ‘Diamond‘  success, wealth, and treasure
The ‘Cable‘  the fisherman’s rope – safety and good luck when fishing
The ‘Irish Moss Stitch‘  a grateful symbol of the gift of the sea, Carrigeen moss which is harvested at the low tide
Nice, huh? 
Actually I was feeling pretty pleased with this project.  It seemed that there had been plenty of good omens. It had taken all of five minutes to decide to make this sweater after I saw the picture.  Cindy had the pattern handy, I had already bought the merino for something or other in the future and now everything was looking good.  So, last night I curled up in my chair with my knitting while C put a really terrible movie in the player.  My newly printed spread sheet was in front of me, I was clocking off the rows, and you know, it was wasn’t until I stopped to admire my progress that I saw the mistake.  Sixteen rows, four cable turns back, I had only three.  I missed one cable the other night, didn’t pick up on it then, and didn’t pick up on it until 16 rows later.  Sh#$!  I really didn’t want to rip all that out.  What did I have to lose, this was a perfect time to try ripping only the nine stitches involved with the cable back seventeen rows and work just those stitches back up.  I almost went to my office to grab the camera, it looked so awful when I had gotten it ripped back, yarn everywhere.  Perfect picture for the blog.  You were saved from that shot.  It just seemed prudent to stay put, not put anything down and not distract myself from the puzzle ahead.  It went along faster than I thought it would, and it did go faster than frogging and knitting all seventeen rows over again.  Finishing the second full pattern repeat will have to wait for tomorrow.