Today I Am a Knitter

Now I’m sure there are those of you who will say that it’s nothing much.  But for me, I feel I’ve taken a step into the world of the grown-up Knitters.

I was working away on what I am calling Suitcase Socks, which I’ll explain more about later. They are pretty staightforward socks, but made from my lovely new base yarn, a superwash 100% Blue Faced Leicester; soft, soft, soft.  The pattern has 2 x 2 ribbing on the instep and leg, and how hard can that be?  Knit two, purl two, repeat. But I looked down and saw this:

Find the stitch on right hand side of the  left needle, follow down that row four stitches, and you’ll see the bar of a purl stitch instead of the V of a knit stitch. What to do?  Carefully unknit four rows, one stitch at a time? (I have no luck picking up all the  live stitches in yarn this fine if I just ripped it.) Or insert a spare set of needles below that point into every stitch, then rip? (see above).  Or . . . ignore it?  It’s just one stitch, it’s way down by the toe, no one will ever notice . . . except me. Can I give them lovingly as a gift, knowing that there is what is becoming in my mind a honking giant mistake,  right on the toe for heaven’s sake, where it will be noticed whenever the feet are put up on a coffee table? Err . . . .  no.

It became clear what I had to do, and I prepared carefully.

First, using a spare needle, I stabilized the lower side of row in question, plus a buffer stitch on either side, plus some more random stitches on either side to anchor the whole thing. Yes, at moments like this I am a belt and suspenders sort of person.

Then, I took the top stitch of the row off its needle, held my breath, and let it rrrrip down to the stabilizing needle.

Then, I took up my trusty crochet hook and looped my my way correctly back up to the top,

 put the newly corrected row back onto the working needle, and knitted on.

Now, this is not Extreme Frogging, as practised by Some People.  No, this is small, and modest.  But for someone who was this century pretty pleased at figuring out how to turn a knit into a purl or vice versa, when encountering it on the next row, it’s pretty good.

Mail Call

I was lucky enough to make the 1000th comment on Cathy-Cate’s delightful blog, Hither and Yarn, and have just received my gift o’yarn!

A skein of hand dyed superwash merino sock yarn from Twisted, whose work I’ve long admired. The colorway is Karma. Generous soul that she is, Cathy also included a mini skein of the Angst colorway, and a really cool magnet. Thank you, Cathy!

I just love the Internet.