The Wisdom of the Yarn Harlot

As I do more and more reading and research in preparation for writing this blog, I have been re-reading a lot Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s work. Stephanie, known as the Yarn Harlot, has been interviewed on several podcasts lately and I have developed a new appreciation for Stephanie. I have read her blog and books for years, but now that I have heard her talk about her knitting and her day to day life, I feel a new kinship with her and her philosophies. She has such a wonderful way of looking at it all.

I have started a notebook where I write down topic ideas for the blog and in reviewing my notes thus far, I found one to be very fitting for today. In a recent interview, Stephanie was talking about the fact that the more advanced a knitter you become, the more complicated the mistakes you make. Well, I can attest to that lately. I have already chronicled some of my frustrations and last night was totally, drive yourself crazy, frustrating.

I had a wonderful time at Knit Picky Knit Night and I made excellent progress on my Vine Lace baby hat. I even started shaping the crown of the hat while still there so when I got home I should have let well enough alone, but I was giddy at the prospect of finishing the little devil. I was really tired and I should have just spent time with my son and my ex who was at our house watching the Red Sox game. I was greedy after my progress and success at Knit Night. So, I got to working again and something went wrong. It looked like I had messed up a stitch and my stitch count was off and I couldn’t really tell what I had done wrong, but I figured I would rip back and figure it out. Well, somehow that created an even bigger mess. This pattern has a lot of yo’s, ssk’s and these slip 2 tog’s, k1 and pass the two slipped stitches over. Anyways, as you can see, it wasn’t exactly simple. My frustration grew as the mess grew, but I knew that I could figure it out if I just stayed with it. I have always been pretty good at reading stitches and dealing with these kinds of things, but with all those decreases and lace, I was starting to feel like maybe I couldn’t pull this off.

After pulling out the two circs I had been working with and letting all the stitches go free (talk about scary), I got out my dpn’s and started picking up stitches randomly and using the needles in tandem on the ssk’s and s2tog,K1, psso’s and I reset the stitches on the dpn’s one by one and with a little perseverance I was able to get it all back together. I had to rip back about four rows in the end, but everything is back on track and ready for me to start again later today with a renewed energy that only a little distance can provide when working on a project gone wrong. Such a small little project with such challenging mistake repairs! The hat is really quite lovely and I can’t wait to get it off the needles! Hopefully, pictures of a finished project will be forthcoming tomorrow.