One of those days

It's one of those days when everything I touch seems to end in chaos. I am posting this in great trepidation - I fully expect that Blogger will eat the whole thing before it gets anywhere near your screen. If there are spelling mistakes or mistakes in grammar please ignore them and be thankful that you are seeing anything at all.

I spent the morning trying to buy Annie Modesitt's pattern for the silk corset. There's a lovely picture of Anita wearing hers which meant I just had to have it. I hope mine turns out so well. Annie says it looks good on everyone - she may come to rue her words when it comes to my figure. I had a big long fight with Paypal over which credit card to use (like I have so many there could be confusion). Eventually, after much coming and going, emailing, tearing out of hair, cursing, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. I managed to pay for the pattern, which is sent by email in pdf format and so should arrive in no time - perfect for instant gratification. Ha! I was still waiting when I had to leave for work.

The pattern has now arrived, looks wonderful and it turns out Annie has been having email/computer "issues" also. It may be catching.

She gives instructions for printing out the pattern to make a little booklet. They are not foolproof. This fool could not manage to do it. There cannot be all that many variations in the way one piece of paper can be put into a printer. (No doubt some smarty-pants mathematician could tell me exactly how many ways - if you are that smarty-pants, why don't you email me or leave a comment - I do not think I could feel any worse.) I am certain I have tried all of them. It is obvious that I can't have tried all of them because I still do not have the pages in the right order and in the right orientation. It is making my brain hurt. Heaven alone knows why I thought doing a round on Rosy Fingered Dawn would improve things.

The corners of the shawl are where the increases happen. On one round you do YO, K3, YO; on the next round you do YO, Double decrease, YO. It's pretty straightforward. Not for me, not today.

I got to the end of the first side and saw this:



The double decrease on the previous round is missing. It should look like this:




Oh, dear. It's not a big problem, do not panic. It is perfectly possible to correct this without taking back the whole of the previous round. You just isolate the three offending stitches; take them off the needle; undo the loops, leaving a big strand at the back and knit them up again, correctly this time. However, the day being as it was I thought I'd rather only do that for one round and not two, so I decided to tink back to the beginning of the round. It's only one side, there are only 121 stitches (I didn't realise that at the time, if I had done I might not have chosen this solution.) I tinked back, even undoing the centred double decrease - slip 2 kwise, K1, pass 2 slipped stitches over- without too much difficulty. When I got back to the beginning of the round I realised that I had not, in fact, made the same mistake on the first corner. The first corner was correct. I had just tinked 121 stitches (including the devilish centred double decrease) for no reason whatsoever, except to pass the time. By great good fortune there was no-one else in the house when I discovered this. Had there been anyone present I think I would still be apologising for the cursing and throwing of sharp objects even now.

At least one brave soul, to my knowledge, has joined the mystery shawl along because I mentioned it on here. Someone else asked if lace wasn't hard. I don't think lace is hard. It's just knitting. As Stephanie says knitting is a binary code: it's either a knit or a purl. You have to do some increasing, which is usually just a yarnover. You have to do some decreasing, which is often a K2tog, or SSK. You may have to read a chart. But that is the extent of it. Believe me, if I can do it anyone can do it. Do not let anyone tell you it is "too hard". You are a knitter - nothing is too hard.