Tag Archive | knitting mistakes

WIP Wednesday

A few months ago, I made a snug little cowl called Just Try It with some luxurious merino/cashmere yarn. I even had enough yarn left over to make matching fingerless gloves, which I’ve worn several times and love. But for some reason, I never tried the cowl on until Sunday when the house was chilly and I needed to get cozy. That seemed like the perfect cowl for the job. Alas, it did not go over my head. One end was too small and too tight.

Now, for a brief moment, I did stop and ponder, “Hm, I wonder who this would fit that I could give it to?” Then I realized it would have to be a child of some sort and well, did I mention this yarn has CASHMERE in it?? Kids are knit-worthy, but maybe not to that extent. Plus, this gave me an unusual treat: I could knit with this yarn again!

The cowl was quickly and easily frogged and I have cast on anew, this time with additional stitches, and I’ll use Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind off when I’m done.

Have you ever frogged a completed project to re-knit the yarn?

Fixing Stitches

Sep10

Sometimes we knitters make mistakes in our projects. When that happens, we have to decide if we can live with it, or if we want to fix it. Many fixes seem rather scary at first, so newer knitters can be shy about diving right in to tinking or picking up dropped stitches. I have a knitter friend who is like that, and I get to feel smart and clever by helping her! Today she had a blanket where she’d purled two stitches that were supposed to be knit. Oops.

They were several rows back, so she was asking what her options were to fix it. I told her the easiest way would be to knit to the stitches and drop down to the errors, then pick the stitches back up with a crochet hook. That seemed scary to her, so I offered to do it. I made sure to text her a scary progress picture.

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Not only were the stitches wrong, but somehow an extra stitch had been added at that same point, so I pulled those unnecessary stitches out, and then pulled out the next row down to the other purl stitch.

Then I used my little hook to pull that stitch up to the top and bam, it was done! There was some extra play in the yarn because of those stitches I pulled out, but that should all even out with the first wash.

This was one of the easiest fixes, honestly. Bulky yarn that is just sticky enough that the stitches don’t come out too easily, and plain stockinette stitches. Next time I’ll make her do it herself, or else how will she learn??

Bad knitting

Mar10

All of my knitting is misbehaving lately! My sweater got put in time-out last week because I messed up the stripe pattern, and I needed a break before pulling out three rows of sleeve. (At least it’s only sleeve and not body.) Yesterday I wanted to work on something bright and interesting, so I pulled out my magenta Malabrigo Heart Check cowl. I merrily knit about ten rows before I realized I was omitting the knit rows between each pattern row. I was supposed to have little purl hearts, and I did not. I assumed it was because of my error and I ripped back and reknit the 14 rows of the pattern. Huh. Still no hearts.

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Look like hearts to you? Nope, me neither. Now, I’d read the comments and knew that there were two errors in the written instructions, but the designer said she’d corrected them, and my PDF said “corrected”. My error was in not double-checking that the errors were actually fixed. One row was correct, and one was not. If I were a chart knitter, I’d have been fine, because those were correct. Alas, I prefer written. So, now the pink cowl is in time-out while I decide how to proceed.

After that disappointment, I turned to my new fur yarn. There weren’t a lot of patterns for this yarn, and I just wanted something simple anyway. One person cast on 15 stitches for a two-skein cowl; since I have three skeins, I cast on 25.

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Nope. After one skein, I knew it wouldn’t be as long as I wanted. Cast on again with 20. Decided this morning, halfway through the second skein, that it still won’t be long enough to wear doubled and that’s the goal. Now the fur has been frogged and put in time-out. But I need a win so I’m circling back and I’m going to frog those sleeve rows and get at least one project back in rotation. I hope you all are having better luck with your yarn than I am right now!