Monday, May 08, 2006

Really, I should not be allowed out of the house...

I'm such a clutz lately.

I went for a walk this morning. Hey, fate, this is an effort to get healthy!!! Are you trying to sabotage that?!?!? How come you never intervene in those doughnut eating moments? Anyway...

I didn't get too far before I decided my MP3 player needed to be turned up just a tad. As I reached in my pocket and was fumbling with the buttons, I tripped over a section of sidewalk that was raised and pitched straight forward.

Luckily, no bones broken, but two nasty scraped palms, one bleeding (don't worry...you don't have to look) quite a bit, plus scraped knee that is not bleeding. I guess I had the sense not to fall on my elbows after the last time.

Ordinarily, a trip and a fall wouldn't stop me from continuing, but the scrapes needed to be washed, disinfected and bandaged. Continuing to walk would have made them bleed even more with the swinging action I take with my arms as I walk. And I'm going to have to sit tight for a while so that the scrapes heal up a little, so I won't be continuing my walk this morning. And it's a glorious morning to be walking in...ah well.

I had a heck of a time getting my keys out to get back in the house because they were in my right pocket and my right palm was the one that I got. I didn't want to bleed all over my pants...which happened to be beige corduroy Land's End trousers that I'm very fond of...it's hard to find pants that are that comfortable these days.

I am grateful that I had the forethought to refill our Band-Aid stores...with three kids in the house, we go through so many Band-Aids that I would buy stock if I didn't disagree with some of the company's charitable efforts.

Now, you're probably wondering where I've been. Not knitting...not after discovering this:




and this:

What's up with this? Well you may ask!!!

It happened as I was waiting for the orthopedic surgeon to come in and talk to me one last time about my wrist and elbow. I had brought the sock along and as I zipped along knitting, I noticed that one of the ridges in the decrease position in the center of one needle had shifted over one stitch several rows back. "Well, I can fix this!" I thought, "I am the boss of my knitting!!!"

And I am, usually...I have fixed errors in lace by dropping down and redoing, successfully too, even though it was a PITA. On one of my first knitting projects, a vest with a patchwork of texture work, I had successfully dropped down and fixed so many errors that they no longer intimidated me. So I dug through my little knitting bag and even though I didn't find a crochet hook, I had a cable needle, I was game! So I fixed the boo boo...it took a lot of thinking about just where I had to change things and which rows were increase rows and which were plain knitting, but after a couple of false starts, I was happy to see that I had managed to fix it! I now had 19 stitches on the needle, 9 on one side, the ridge stitch in the middle and 9 on the other side.

Then I decided it would be a good idea to count the stitches on the other needles to make sure they all had this delightful evenness on each side of the ridge stitch. And that's when I noticed it....can you tell? Have you figured it out?

The first picture shows a needle with the required 19 stitches, but instead of having 9 on each side of the ridge stitch, there is 10 on one side and 8 on the other. And it goes all the way down to the ribbing...it would have to be ripped all the way back, or fixed in the same way as the last error, except there would be more of it.

The second picture shows one needle with 17 stitches, meaning I missed two increases somewhere...increases are a lot harder to add after you get past them than any other type of fix. So while the first error could be fixed without ripping back, I don't think this one can....all the way back to the ribbing I would have to go, negating many hours of happy knitting...sob...

So you can see why I flung the whole shebang aside and said "Poot!!! Dagnabbit! %&$* knitting!!!!"

As a result, I've gotten a lot more scrapbooking done lately.

Yes, I know, I could simply accept the flaws as they are, figure a way of adding the missing stitches, ignoring the fact that the one ridge is not exactly in the center and forging ahead. But...then I'd have to remember to knit that one needle differently than the rest and it would spoil my rhythm...rats...

Maybe it's time to start something new....



5 comments:

Clare said...

Such is life. That is two down (of bad things to happen) What is No.3? Or that is now the 3 bad things and everything will now be rosy for you.
I hope it is the latter.

Clare

Fiber-4-U said...

Are those Jaywalker socks?

I need to try that pattern, those socks are lovely :)

Anonymous said...

Missing your posts and wondering how you are doing. What's new?

Peggy said...

That pattern is beautiful (and I love your colours!) but I gave up on it. I couldn't keep the ridges straight for anything and wanted mindless TV knitting. Maybe I'll pick it up again some day.

Clare said...

Hiya,

Love to read about what you are up to. I presume that you have been very busy latly. a new post soon to let us know how you are?

I hope all is well. Keep on knitting.