*siren*    *the lights flash at last*

Knitting Police.  Ma’am, do you know why I asked you to purl over?

No, Officer, I don’t.

You’re impeding frog-ness and you have stitches piling up behind you that saw very well what you did. I got a 911 call from them.

I didn’t do anything wrong, Officer! Just speeding on past the swatching stage… And yeah, I did change it just a bit–well, a lot on this version over the first shawl–but I did the math and jotted down the numbers and I knew it would work right, so I thought I’d go ahead and get started on this second one…

I thought so. Look, lady, I don’t want to get in a row with you.  Just come off those needles peacefully now.

I will not! I’ve done nothing wrong!

That’s what they all say.

…Oh… An extra stitch at the end of… But how on earth…

(And then she proved to be a repeat offender…)

Which is how this knitter spent three hours in knitter jail today and had the book thrown at her.  This might also help explain why it is not yet on payroll: it has to be done exactly right.

One row. I got just.one. row finished for three hours’ work, not because I needed more swatching, not because it was hard–it wasn’t–but because I was distracted and wasn’t paying enough attention to reading the actual knitting at a point where the pattern didn’t show well yet. I kept making dumb mistakes in very small dark stitches on a dark needle.  Tink, tink, again and again till I finally frogged way back in disgust, thinking: I could have wound a second 500+ yard ball and started over on a different needle by now and been past that point.  But wherever the mistake was, *that* should get it because I know it was perfect up till there!

And then I put it down and walked away for hours.  I finally went back to it and simply made myself get past the point that had stymied me. (And thought, What was my problem here! That was so easy!)

Like I knew all along it should be.  Sometimes you just need to go do something else for awhile.

But I also firmly believe that if you have to frog part of a project you intend to finish, you should try to get past where you were on it before the day ends if you possibly can in order to help keep it from becoming a *TOAD.  Or else the row’dkill that project.

And it is on its merry way now. Looking good!

(p.s. And this is another reason why I knit each project multiple times before putting it out there. It has to be perfect and then proven perfect again in exactly that rendition. Better yet, at least three times.  And I do.)

——

*Trashed Object Abandoned in Disgust