Lessons

I'm not going to try to pull the wool over your eyes (ha!): I made the most colossally stupid mistake this weekend. I mistook cm for inches. I know, I know, how on earth I could have imagined that the sweater front from ribbing to underarm should have been 30.5 INCHES is beyond me. My brain is addled by stitches, peeps.

At any rate, I basically knitted the front of my sweater twice before I realized I'd have to rip back 25 cm. Lord, that's a lot of knitting. Like, um, 10 hours - not including time to fix mistakes along the way.

And then there's the matter that my lifelines only go back about 20 rows. So I had to try to figure out how to insert one, 25 cm back, in lacework. What a freakin' nightmare.

It took me an hour to figure out that the lifelines (I did 2) had failed. At which point I was ready to throw myself off a bridge. For real.

So, I tried the only thing left in my arsenal. I went to my LYS (local yarn store) where I was thrilled to find my creative knitting expert of yore (the one who assisted me in getting the goods required for my last sweater. You remember, the one that worked).

She told me that a lifeline after the fact, in lacework, is more or less useless, whereupon she proceeded to rip mine out, just like that. I actually yelped from horror.

Don't worry, all was well as she proceeded to fix it in a veritable jiffy, without a cursory glance at the pattern. It was practically as soul-stirring as the scene in Apollo 13 where they figure out how to get the astronauts home.

Apparently, it was easy, but don't take it from me. My eyes had officially glazed over.

Here's today's lesson: Just cuz you think something is disastrous and irreparable doesn't mean there isn't someone who can fix it in 5 minutes flat.

If you're willing to leave your comfort zone for adventure, be willing to leave it for assistance. Share your problems to find solutions. And to take the edge off.