msmcknittington (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
msmcknittington) wrote2007-12-07 10:27 pm
msmcknittington) wrote2007-12-07 10:27 pm
Oh, hey, I can't knit OR crochet lace.
This is a public service announcement about trusting the pattern. Always trust the pattern. Don't try to proactively fix it. You will be wrong, and forced to rip out hundreds of stitches. Really. Trust me on this.
Enter the Delicate Doily, a.k.a. my grandma's Christmas present.
Isn't it beautiful? It's the most beautiful thing I've ever crocheted.
OK, at this point, I had three rows left to crochet. I thought I'd be done tonight, and I could work on my sister's stole (more on that later). Then, as I was taking this picture, I realized something wrong was going on at the join of the rounds.
If the text on the photo doesn't tell you, this is where the mistake is. There's only supposed to be three loops between the arched motifs, not four. Long story short, I assumed I knew better than the pattern, so I fixed it. I fixed it wrong.
This is what it's supposed to look like. No, this isn't the join, but the space between another two of the arched motifs. (Technically, they're not motifs, but I don't know what else to call them. Motifs are smaller crocheted pieces that you join together to make a large piece.)
My initial reaction to this fuck-up was that I could just drop down the stitches at the join and fix it, like you do in knitting. BUT OH WAIT. This is crochet, so I'll have to rip out three rounds and do them over -- otherwise known as all the work I've done in the past day. Crochet gives me some tennis elbow twinges, so this does not make me happy. I find crochet to be more challenging to rip back than knitting, too, so I'm not looking forward to this at any rate, tennis elbow aside.
Putting off ripping out the doily, I picked up my sister's stole. Within three stitches, I discovered that some plies in the strand of yarn had broken, so I had to tink back to the beginning of the row, cut the yarn, rejoin it, and re-do work I had already done. Lame.
I was knitting along happily following the rejoining of yarn, reading my knitting instead of the chart, when I discovered that I had messed up in a serioius way on one repeat in the middle of the piece. Unfortunately, the mistake had been made eight rows/1064 stitches ago, but the pattern for that section was such that reading my knitting didn't let me notice the mistake, because I was either purling across a row or yo k2tog within a border of knit stitches.
I'm tempted just to drop the stitches on the repeat, and knit that section back up correctly, but I don't know. There's room for a lot more catastrophes with that approach, even though it would be less work if it succeeded. The reason I'm thinking about doing that is that the pattern repeat is 63 rows long, and I'm halfway through a repeat. My last lifeline was at the beginning of the repeat, so I'm not keen in ripping back that far.
Man, I just cannot win at lace lately. I'm dropping stitches, breaking yarn, and just generally making mistakes that I normally don't. These are not difficult patterns! I am capable of doing this without doing this!
Enter the Delicate Doily, a.k.a. my grandma's Christmas present.
Isn't it beautiful? It's the most beautiful thing I've ever crocheted.
OK, at this point, I had three rows left to crochet. I thought I'd be done tonight, and I could work on my sister's stole (more on that later). Then, as I was taking this picture, I realized something wrong was going on at the join of the rounds.
If the text on the photo doesn't tell you, this is where the mistake is. There's only supposed to be three loops between the arched motifs, not four. Long story short, I assumed I knew better than the pattern, so I fixed it. I fixed it wrong.
This is what it's supposed to look like. No, this isn't the join, but the space between another two of the arched motifs. (Technically, they're not motifs, but I don't know what else to call them. Motifs are smaller crocheted pieces that you join together to make a large piece.)
My initial reaction to this fuck-up was that I could just drop down the stitches at the join and fix it, like you do in knitting. BUT OH WAIT. This is crochet, so I'll have to rip out three rounds and do them over -- otherwise known as all the work I've done in the past day. Crochet gives me some tennis elbow twinges, so this does not make me happy. I find crochet to be more challenging to rip back than knitting, too, so I'm not looking forward to this at any rate, tennis elbow aside.
Putting off ripping out the doily, I picked up my sister's stole. Within three stitches, I discovered that some plies in the strand of yarn had broken, so I had to tink back to the beginning of the row, cut the yarn, rejoin it, and re-do work I had already done. Lame.
I was knitting along happily following the rejoining of yarn, reading my knitting instead of the chart, when I discovered that I had messed up in a serioius way on one repeat in the middle of the piece. Unfortunately, the mistake had been made eight rows/1064 stitches ago, but the pattern for that section was such that reading my knitting didn't let me notice the mistake, because I was either purling across a row or yo k2tog within a border of knit stitches.
I'm tempted just to drop the stitches on the repeat, and knit that section back up correctly, but I don't know. There's room for a lot more catastrophes with that approach, even though it would be less work if it succeeded. The reason I'm thinking about doing that is that the pattern repeat is 63 rows long, and I'm halfway through a repeat. My last lifeline was at the beginning of the repeat, so I'm not keen in ripping back that far.
Man, I just cannot win at lace lately. I'm dropping stitches, breaking yarn, and just generally making mistakes that I normally don't. These are not difficult patterns! I am capable of doing this without doing this!