It was only a matter of time

Today's post was supposed to be a discussion (for "discussion" read "Kate on her soap-box") of what makes a good knitting blog, but events have overtaken me.

Last evening, I returned from The Bridge in Bidford, after a wonderful dinner (heartily recommend this place, if ever you are passing) to discover the gizmo I use to stop the stitches of the WRS flinging themselves off the needle on the floor. The knitting was where I had left it, but the gizmo wasn't. This did not bode well. I snatched up the knitting (without even taking off my hat) and discovered about 20 stitches had made a bid for freedom.

There is no picture. I was in shock. I had left 'im indoors, his two offspring and their cousin, with a pan of fish soup, a foccacia in the oven, the plates warming, the table set. I returned to mayhem (at least on the knitting front, the soup was eaten, the washing up done). What on earth had they been up to? "Nothing," according to 'im indoors. I don't suppose we shall ever know the truth. Suffice to say there are bad books and people are in them.

I did the best job I could of snatching up the rogue stitches on a skinny dpn and went to bed in disgust.

In the cold light of day - it was just as bad. The knitting elves had not been active in the night-time. I had managed to retrieve most of the stitches. About fifteen had not run anywhere and just needed to be correctly oriented on the needle. However, there was a horrid bit (in the most complex part, naturally) where five stitches had run down a few rows.

The first thing I did was get some polystyrene (still not thrown away after the latest electrical purchase); cover it with a pink cloth (black would have been better but I don't have black napkins); place the knitting on top and pin it out so I could see the worst:



Base of triangle here is a dpn with four stitches that have fallen two rows down. Left needle contains the stitches I have managed to pluck up. Right needle contains the stitches that were unaffected. The red pin is holding the first loop of yarn that needs to be used out of the way. The second loop of yarn is going across the top of the picture, between the two stitches on the original needles.

Next thing? Refer to the chart and isolate the part that needs to be recreated:



The right arrow is indicating the first stitch on the right needle. The left arrow is indicating the first stitch on the left needle. Here we can see that there should be five stitches on the dpn and not four. That was a missing yo which was easily replaced. Following the chart, I recreated the first row - that's the one above the heavy line on the chart. It looks like this:



Here you can see the five stitches on the dpn. The final loop is held out of the way with the purple pin.

Follow the chart again. Recreate the final row. This was a bit dodgy because it contained the dreaded "yo, sl1, K2tog, psso, yo" (that the little triangle on the chart). It's lucky I'm the loose woman because that meant I had plenty of yarn to play with. ("Play" is hardly the word, but you get my drift.)

This is what it looks like at the end of the repair:



and this is what the "correct" motif looks like:



Can you tell the difference? I don't think I can and I'm absolutely sure the fellow on the running horse won't have a clue.

Phew!