Penalty box knitting

I have put the big Dale of Norway sweater into the penalty box. I am angry with it. FURIOUS, in fact. Grievously offended.

This morning, I picked up the sleeve I was working on and began working. And suddenly, I thought, Wait a second…was there supposed to be a…so I’ve increased, and the pattern goes…there should be one of those…aw, @*^&@^!!!!

I messed up the pattern. And I could not have done it in a more obvious and ugly fashion.

I tried to fix it by laddering down the thirty rounds (or so) to the beginning of the flub and working them back up correctly. The wool promptly began to felt, so the white and black are almost identical and the fix looks like complete ass.

And then I realized it isn’t that simple – there’s a lot of stitches on either side of the flub that are also wrong. And now they are obviously wrong.

I became so angry that I threw the sleeve back into the knitting basket and sulked for the remaining ten minutes of knitting time this morning. I was too angry even to get the current Sock In Progress instead.

I’ve looked at all my assorted options. The yarn is too grabby to ladder out and rework well; it felts together when I try and the laddered-up stitches look like black and white variegated rather than black and white stitches. The idea of tearing back makes me feel woozy. At the moment, I’m thinking I may just put that sleeve on a holder, cast on the second sleeve and work it while I ponder what to do about the first one – and possibly I’ll just go ahead and cast on a third sleeve after that, pretending the first one never happened in the first place.

I’m that annoyed.

But I’d also have to tear back to basically the very beginning of the sleeve. (Idiot.) So really, the knitting-time difference between tearing back and just starting anew is about an hour. (Argh.) And I could fix the wobble where I didn’t handle the join on the DPNs very well (rookie move).

I hate this sweater right now.

While I get on with sulking, I’m going to go ahead and shove it into the closet for a while (it isn’t a Christmas present, after all) and move on to a nice, safe lace shawl. (Stop laughing.)

Stupid sweater. Stupid sleeve increases. Stupid patterns. Stupid, stupid, STUPID.