Twist and Shout

Sometimes, knitters make mistakes.  I know, I know, we don't want to admit it.  We think maybe we can drink it away.  Maybe no one will notice, or only the really advanced knitters will notice, and they'll be too polite to mention it.

I made a mistake.

Knitting along, watching television, I wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing.   Perhaps I set my knitting down in the middle of a round and forgot where I was when I picked it back up.  Either way, something terrible happened.  I forgot to twist a cable.  Uggh, just look at it:

Do you see it?

Maybe you don't see it.  But I do!  It's right there, a big patch of stockinette that should be twisted into a cable, like its neighbor a few stitches down.

And as you can see, I didn't notice it until I was already 6 rounds further along.  I'd already made another cable before I noticed this one, sitting there grinning with its ugly, untwisted face.  What was a girl to do?  I could have ripped back those 6 rows, but it would have been nearly impossibly to pick up the lace panels that are having a jolly day between the cables.  If I'd put in a lifeline, like a smart knitter, it wouldn't have been a problem.  I am not a smart knitter.

I could have ripped the entire hat out, then gone and cried for a little while.  But I didn't want to do that, either.  

So I got brave.  Using a technique demonstrated by the Yarn Harlot, I slipped just the offending cable panel off my needles.

Whoa!  That's crazy!  Why would you purposefully slip stitches off the needle?

Nine precarious stitches.  Just these.  The stitches that are surrounding it on the needle are safe because they're still on the needle.  But these nine stitches are about to be shaken to their core.

Oh the humanity!  

I ripped them back 7 rows, just far enough to properly twist the cable.  Then I used a couple DPNs and worked those stitches like their own little mini rounds using the yarn from each respective round (that kind of looks like awful green spaghetti in that picture).

If I had the hat with me (I'm travelling for work again), I would show you the after-picture.  It worked!  I fixed the cable, finished the hat, and it's beautifully Spring-esque.  Don't let your mistakes hold you back, knitters.  If I can fix this unsightly cable without too much wine, you can certainly correct your knitting mishaps!

Edit: Check out the finished hat!

Ten Things I Would Rather Do Than Weave in Ends

I signed up for a Reddit hat swap in r/knitting a month or so ago, and the person I'm sending to has her heart set on a fair isle hat.  That's cool, I like fair isle.  The hat, based off the DIY Fair Isle Hat pattern by Meg Myers, was really interesting to knit.  I had a chance to flex my creative fingers as I used five different colors of yarn rather than a solid and a variegated, and I also modified part of the pattern so that the top would be a flat square because my partner specifically asked for the hat not to be a beanie.  

It was fun, I have a lot of leftover yarn to play with, all is well.  Except.  Except the inside of the hat.  It's full of loose ends that require weaving in.  I count at least 23.

What a mess!

Uggh.  It's my least favorite thing to do.  I mean, really, I hate weaving in ends and generally go out of my way to avoid it by knitting things in one piece rather than seaming, limiting colors or using creative joins to switch between colors, or simply knotting yarn together and leaving the ends to hang out in any item that's for my personal use.  But none of those are options this time around.

Top Ten Things I'd Rather Do Than Weave in Ends:

1. Donate blood
2. Stare at the wall
3. Pick at hangnails
4. Give my cat a bath
5. Scrub away the grit that builds up behind the toilet
6. Sigh at my yarn stash and dream of other projects
7. Write something for my actual job
8. Drink
9. Rant
10. Pay someone very much money to do it for me

I have another week to finish this up and ship it out (deadline is May 1), so I guess I'll just have to suck it up and get it done.  But I really don't want to.