And if you think that sounds like swearing, you should have heard me after I had to rip back the toe on my Viking socks for the third time yesterday evening. There was nothing wrong with the pattern, which really is beautiful and I highly recommend. No, all the faults were my own. The first time I completely messed up my decreases, so back it all came. The second time I messed up my cables so they didn't flow nicely into the toe ribbing. The third time I realise I'd accidentally dropped a stitch at the decrease, so I couldn't rescue it with my ancient and tiny crochet hook, I had to rip back the toe for a third time. After that I gave up.
Have you had to rip much back lately? Isn't it frustrating? All those hours of work, gone with a good yank on the yarn. On the other hand, it's one of the beauties of knitting that we can rip back our knitting and begin again. Imagine how much worse it would be to be dressmaking and realise that a piece of fabric had been cut wrongly. As irritating as watching the knitting disappear can be, we can grit our teeth, pick up our needles again and get it right.
If you're going to I Knit day on Sunday, I'll definitely be there, and I'm going to be wearing those wretched socks, so do say hello and see what's been causing me so much stress! SOCKS!
Monday September 01, 2008 
