you are all terribly concerned, i know.

So, the current project. I've got an allover cable in multiples of 28. I'd cast on 118, for four repeats sideways with a three-stitch border on each side, and done three rows of stockinette before starting the cable as the pattern encouraged me to do (it's a plain pattern, but gives options if you want to do fancier stuff instead), gartering the border, and almost immediately wished I'd done garter instead of stockinette at the beginning, and that I'd cast on 120 and had a four-stitch border. Ah well, I thought, bygones.

But then about halfway through the first 36-row repeat of the pattern I noticed what looked like a mistake I'd made. Except it was about two seconds later that I noticed the apparent mistake was on every repeat (horizontally, obvs.), meaning I'd done what I was told and it had turned out funky. I looked at the work, saw that the "mistake" (the goofy thing the pattern made me do) was really only visible on the wrong side, grumbled, and decided to live with it.

Fifteen rows later, I saw that I had made a genuine mistake two rows after the goofy in-pattern mistake.

It was also only visible on the wrong side, but it was on one branch of one cable in one repeat and the other branch of another cable in another repeat, for two different mistakes in four repeats (each of which has two cables in it), and y'all know me, there's no way I could live with that. So I ripped the whole thing all the way back to nothing and began again.

And now I've got my 120-stitch cast-on and my garter border, and I made a note in the pattern so I didn't do the thing that's goofy and looks like a mistake, plus I haven't made any other mistakes have been able to fix other mistakes as I've made them, and I'm back to where I was: one 36-row repeat of the pattern completed, but this time it is perfect.

hurrah for progress

I came home from work early today because I was feeling dizzy and queasy and generally ick, and felt that taking it easy for the afternoon and going if necessary to the doctor in the morning (should be okay, but I'm reserving the possibility in case I feel like crap when I wake up) beat the hell out of taking a whole sick day or more any closer to the deadline.

So I lay down on the couch for a couple of hours and that was absolutely the correct thing to have done. And then when I felt a little more like sitting up, I picked up the knitting again, and it continues to go like lightning. I'm always pleased by the moment when a pattern clicks and makes sense and you know what you're doing, so while you do check back in with the printed page every so often to make sure you're where you think you are, you're mainly flying on your own - instead of, you know, reading "k4, p2, k2, p2, k4" and knitting four and then going "wait, now, what next?" (It's the same with music; when you know a piece and you can sing the whole thing without taking your eyes off the conductor more than a couple of times, how awesome is that? I sometimes catch myself turning the page without having looked at it at all, and wondering how I knew that was where the page turn was.)

I'm at row 24 of the second repeat. Woo-hoo! And now I'm going to bed early.