Aack!

Yesterday morning I happened to glance at the Victorian Lace Today errata sheet and noticed it included a correction to Chart B. I could SWEAR I checked the errata sheet before I started knitting the Alpine. I’m positive I did. Well, if I did, I somehow missed the following note:

Page 37 Chart B Row 7
Second square from the left needs to be shaded.

You know me. By now I’ve knit 22.5 pattern repeats of Chart B. The stitch in question is part of a 5 stitch transition between the 4 pattern repeats that make up the center of the shawl (Chart B) and the left border (Chart A). In 7 of the 8 rows of the transition pattern repeat, the pattern is a mirror image of the 5 stitches that make up the transition between the right border (Chart A) and the 4 pattern repeats that make up the center (Chart B). Every time I came to Row 7, I thought: “I wonder if that should be a purl stitch instead of a knit stitch? It’s the only stitch that doesn’t match the transition on the right side of the shawl.” Since I am me, I also told myself: “You’ve already checked the errata sheet, so you can knit on. No worries.” And, of course, that’s what I did.

Once I realized I’d missed the correction on the errata sheet, I spent the day considering whether I had the courage to undo that one stitch all the way to Row 7 in the first pattern repeat. (That would mean working my way down 174 rows and back up again – rows in a LACE shawl, knitted with REALLY SLIPPERY silk yarn.) Since the one column of stitches is reverse stockinet stitch it wouldn’t be impossible, but it was still scary to contemplate.

I left work a little early to spend some time with Brian before I drove him down to his father’s house in Cincinnati. It was after 9:00 p.m., when I got home and took a hard look at the Alpine Shawl.

I pinned it out and tried to photograph the right transition stitches and the left transition stitches so I could show you the problem. Unfortunately, my photography skills were not up to the task. Our camera is a little more complicated than “point and shoot,” and I could not get close up shots that weren’t blurry. I really tried. I tried to photo-shop them, but that didn’t work either.

Maybe it was the late hour, I don’t know, but the more I looked at the shawl the more I began to think that if it was so hard to see the errant knit stitches maybe I could live with them. Then I made a classic Susan error. After fooling around with the camera and trying to photo-shop the pics, it was getting pretty late. My judgment was clouded. I wanted to knit some to soothe myself before I went to bed. So I picked up the shawl and knit a couple of rows. Then I realized I’d made a mistake and attempted to tink back. That’s when I dropped a stitch that quickly unraveled several rows. It's a good thing I was home alone because I cursed a blue streak.

At that point I didn’t have the heart to pull out the needle and rip back to the life line. I just threw the thing in a heap and went to bed. This morning I discovered that even when the Alpine is discarded in a heap it still has the power to mock me.