Lesson learned

I would like to share a lesson I learned yesterday. I use an iPhone app for a project row counter, and it currently has 7 projects listed. I took my diamond gansey socks to the LYS last night. I opened the project counter for the socks, and started knitting. My counter said I should start on row 6. I noticed that the diamonds didn't look quite right, but I was experiencing an awesome sugar high and didn't think anything of it (a mtn dew and a jelly-filled donut, if you're wondering).

Finally, I admit that something is wrong. Diamonds don't normally have 6 points. I had copied the chart for the socks into excel so that I didn't have to carry the book around, and I figured that I simply copied the chart incorrectly and that I am incapable of reading said chart. After knitting 2 rows, I carefully frogged the pattern rows back to the beginning (that's about 7 rows), only to realize that I had opened the project for Fred's surprise project instead of the diamond gansey project. I started knitting row 6 when I should have been knitting row 8.

Lesson: If you're going to use technology to make knitting easier, at least make sure you open the right project or you'll get to do unnecessary frogging.

This is what happens when I try to be smart

I'm working on the skirt. You do 50 rows of garter stitch, and the next row you increase evenly so that you end up with 252 stitches. The first row of the chart pattern required 33 stitches; 252 does not divide evenly by 33. Sooooooo, I figured out how many stitches I needed to be divisible by 33 and be bigger than 252; 264 it was. So I tinked back enough stitches to fit 14 extras in (knitting in the front and back, in addition to the M1 that was already there). I was so proud of myself for finding an error! I didn't want to knit the chart and find out I was short stitches.

Fast forward to me knitting at the end of the first row of the chart. Turns out I have 14 stitches too many. I suck, and I'm tinking the entire first row (252 stitches mind you) as well as the few stitches of the increase row where I extra increased. Go me. Lesson learned: next time, try the directions before you try to fix it. It might just be right.