Sunday, April 11, 2010

Fixing Lace Part One

I don’t use lifelines (string or needle cables threaded through a good row of knitting so you can safely rip back to that point).  They feel too fiddly to me and take time.  So far this eschewing of lifelines has worked to my advantage, until this:

20100410 Big Mistake

The big arrow points to a mistake that I cannot ignore or easily fix.  The little arrow points to the general area of the start of the pattern repeat.  The idea is that you pick up stitches with a double pointed needle (DPN) in the area pointed to by the little arrow, then you drop the stitches in that repeat down to the picked up stitches:

20100410 Drop 1 repeat

I can see that I haven’t picked up stitches very well.  This is a 12-stitch repeat and I have 15 “stitches” picked up, and there are gaps on the needle where I missed picking up.  So, the next step is to pin those long floats out of the way and fix the picked up row on the DPN.

20100410 Stabalize floats ... 20100410 Take A Break

The picture on the left is out of focus, which is how I was feeling about then.  I still haven’t got the picked up row right yet.  It looks like part of the picked up stitches are actually from the row below, because I have two floats for those stitches on the DPN.  I was out of good light at this point and in need of a glass of wine, so I piled it up in the dining room and quit for the day.

I’m undecided about lifelines at this point.  Next:  knitting up the repeat.

3 comments:

  1. A glass of wine? I think I'd need a bottle of single Scotch looking at your pics. And then a looong vacation. You are braver my dear than I would ever be. I'd either have knit backwards or sewn that big hole into one or two smaller ones, depending on the pattern. I play fast and loose with life lines too, figuring I'll take a chance since 99 out 100 times nothing happens. And, then, I get hit by that evil knitting imp. Good luck. I can't wait to see how it turns out for you. Renate

    ReplyDelete
  2. Diane, that is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. I think I'd rather try to do neurosurgery than fix that. You are one brave, intrepid knitter!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, Diane, I think I missed this on your blog - and like Renate, you are far braver than me. This is what I thought I would do with the error that made me drop back 8 rows on my lotus, but I finally gave in and tinked back instead. The wine was a good choice though. Next time I have an error, I'm opening up a bottle.

    ReplyDelete