The Saga of the Ankle

So, the other day I missed my footing near the bottom of the stairs and twisted my ankle. Off to the hospital to have it checked out, taking with me the pink entrelac socks-in-progress:



These are being knitted on skinny little steel needles that I snapped up in the charity shop (aka "The Boutique").

Yarn is Jaeger Baby Merino DK bought at Shipston Needlecraft. They don't have a website but their sister shop Burford Needlecraft does. This is my first attempt at entrelac and never being one to resist a challenge, I jumped right in with a pattern which says, "Recommended for knitters with experience knitting entrelac". The pattern is in "Socks, Socks, Socks" (I only give you this link because it includes the "look inside" option - naturally, you wouldn't actually buy it from there, would you? Well, you might if you were in the US. Oh, shut up, Kate.)

Anyway, turns out the ankle is not broken, thank goodness, just badly sprained. "Do you have to go to work?" "Yes." "Can you rest it at work?" Huge snort from me. "Fat chance." So that's why I'm sitting with the foot up:



instead of dashing round "The Bell" as I usually do.

Foot above seen sporting the "False Flame Crew Socks", also from the 3xSocks book and made with Rowan Wool Cotton on 3.25mm dpns.

This means I've had ample opportunity to tear my hair out over the Heirloom Shawl:



which really doesn't look much at the moment, does it? To me, that's part of the joy of knitting lace - it looks like a crumpled old rag until the blocking stage when it is suddenly revealed in all its ethereal beauty.

I did have too many stitches in the centre section and was wondering if the pattern wasn't wrong (again). It turns out that I had forgotten to do a K2tog on the previous row. That was easily sorted. I just took back the two stitches, knitted them together with the strand now lying at the back and carried on.

Years ago, I used to tink right back to where the mistake was and knit it all again. Now I move heaven and earth to avoid tinking, much less frogging. Results are usually good, sometimes not perfect but I've also learned to stop worrying too much about a tiny mistake. It's not like the knitting police are walking around stopping people saying, "That doesn't look like the picture." It is a design element, I tell you.

Heather left a comment (Thanks, Heather!) asking if I'd thought of emailing the designer. Good idea, but been there, done that. First I emailed Canadian Living magazine, received a very nice, very prompt reply, telling me my email had been forwarded to the designer. I also had a reply from there too. The gist of which was if I wanted the chart I could buy Patons leaflet #whatever. Well, thanks a lot. I knew that. I also knew that the chart itself was littered with errors, so I'm hardly likely to splash out good money on something I've already got, am I?

It was also interesting that the designer left all the previous correspondence on the bottom of her email. The one from the magazine simply said, "Here's another question about the pattern." (My emphasis) So that one little word tells quite a story, no?

I leave you with a close up of the centre section of the Heirloom Shawl, now back on track: