Every way but right

OK, I don’t have a picture yet – but I finally started a project that isn’t, you know, one of those “ummmmmm…” projects. I cast on Every Way Wrap from Interweave’s Fall 2009 magazine – it’s for a friend, and after hitting her with, like, forty-thousand-billion suggestions, I found a cone of my own “raw” Merino worsted (the same stuff I used to make this).

Ahem. Yes. We could buy yarn for it, or, we could use my yarn. And then you don’t have to pick from somebody else’s palette, I could totally dye it whatever color you want.

As this friend is thoroughly Irish – guess what? We’re leaving it “Aran Natural.” Much as I like playing with my dye pots sweating over the finicky work of getting feltable Merino dyed Just So, I think it’s an excellent choice on her part. She’s right about that natural color going with more things, but also it shows off the cables splendidly.

Which I’d love to show you! So, why do I have no pictures yet? Funny story! Where “funny” equals “not at all funny, and I really am in the mood to HIT something so aren’t you glad you aren’t actually physically HERE?!”

Sigh.

What really irks me about what happened is that I had already realized that I needed to pay very close attention to detail on this project. SEE, at first, I didn’t realize it was a reversible cable knitting pattern. (I know. That took a breathtaking lack of attention to detail.)

But I did realize something wasn’t quite right with the chart. I’ve done a lot of cables in my time, so I knew right away that when they said I should be slipping 2 to the back, purling two from left needle, purling the two from the cable hook…uh…no…that can’t be right…oooooh! Wait! This is one of them-thar reversible cable patterns! Kewl!!

…mmm…still doesn’t feel right to me, but, well, never really done the reversible cable thing before sooooooooooooooo…

Two rows later, I stomped upstairs and Googled the pattern and sure enough – errata published.

And how many times must these sorts of things happen before I Google “$PATTERN_NAME errata” before I’ve put a whack of time into something that doesn’t feel right? Or even (dare I suggest it?) before casting on in the first place?!

The world may never know…

So, with the chart fixed (the problem was that the symbols and their descriptions were offset by a column) (yes way) (have you ever had one of those moments where you thought oh, that sounds like something I’ve done in the past…glad it wasn’t me THIS time, though…? yeah, me too), I cheerfully began working away at it.

And it began to grow beneath my skillful hands (Pride-Fall Alert! Pride-Fall Alert!) at a very satisfying clip indeed. After so many projects worked on teeny-tiny needles with fingering weight yarn, it’s a joy to be working with worsted on nines! And after having done that stocking in Red Heart, this Merino is like a salve to my hands!

I am in love, thoroughly in love. I may not give it to her when it’s done. I might tell her…it got destroyed in a fire! Or stolen! Yes! It was stolen, right out of my car, by wool thieves…!

I worked on it while watching the news. I worked on it while sitting in the pickup lane waiting for Denizens thrice daily. I worked at it with my morning coffee. I worked at it instead of eating lunch because this is what knitters do when they have a new project in their hands.

And then…this evening…I was sitting there petting it…and looking at the pattern and kind of flipping it over to look at the back and then to the front and remarking to myself that seriously, reversible cables are COOL when…

{DRAMATIC MUSIC!!!!!}

I. Saw. It.

A single cable where there ought to be a twist. Right there, about ten rows back…

For one wild moment, I thought, No, no, it’s OK, that’s how it’s supposed to be, look! The one right below it is that way too…

But the one below that? You know, the one fifty-four rows back?

Double twist.

My stomach demonstrated the way the cable was supposed to have twisted back around itself as I realized that I’ve been skipping rows thirteen through sixteen for two full pattern repeats.

…eleven…twelve…seventeen…geesh, no wonder I was burning through the pattern repeats so fast!!!!

I spent about an hour in angry denial. Slamming cupboard doors, growling at Denizens, resisting an urge to break down in wild weeping…but eventually…welllllll…

A knitter’s gotta do what a knitter’s gotta do.

I frogged it all the way back to just below where I’d started going wrong. And then I picked it all back up, very carefully because the only thing harder than picking up a cable is picking up reversible cables (both of which are approximately 10,000% easier than picking up lace, mind you), and then I knit one (1) row to make sure I had all the stitches present, accounted for and facing the right way.

And then I put it down, very carefully and gently.

And now, I’m going to bed.

Because really – there is only so much a knitter can take in a single evening. And if I do something stupid on this thing again tonight…well.

$DEITY only knows what might befall our little world.

Besides. I’m pouting. I hate it when I do something stupid and obvious, but don’t cotton on for many, many hours worth of work.

It peeves me.

And because it can’t fight back…I blame the knitting. It should have been more obvious about rows thirteen through sixteen. I mean!! Really!!!! How could it sit there and maliciously hide the fact that it was missing double cables right there that way?

If it really loved me, it would have said something sooner.

Seriously.

It would have.

{pout}