In Which the Pirate Makes a Mistake.

In six years of knitting, you’d think that I would have learned one very important lesson: that I should never knit anything more complicated than stockinette in the round when I am exhausted. And readers, yesterday I was very, very tired. A combination of things had conspired to keep me from sleeping on Wednesday night, beginning with kittens hopping on my ribs at 02:00 and ending with the fact that, for some reason, it was approximately seven million degrees (Fahrenheit, though I think at that temperature it doesn’t matter much) in our bedroom. As a result I spent much of Thursday shuffling about in a zombie-like daze, but I couldn’t resist the siren call of the yarn in the evening when I sat down at my desk.

Because I was ahead of schedule, I rationalized, I could work for an hour on one of my own projects and still manage to get everyone’s gifts done in time. I reached for the second of the Timey-Wimey Jaywalkers, figured out where I’d left off (in the middle of the gusset decreases) and knit an entire stripe before I realized… I’d been forgetting the slipped stitches that edge the stockinette sole. I had no recollection of these stitches at all. I examined the first sock – yep, there were slipped stitches there. I examined the parts of the gusset that I’d knit back in July – slipped stitches there, too. Rats!

Someone recently asked on the Ravelry forums if she was alone in making mistakes, if other people knit everything perfectly the first time around. I’m pretty sure everyone who read that had a good laugh, because there is no such thing as perfect knitting all the time. Even super-prolific knitters like the Yarn Harlot and Wendy Johnson make mistakes, and they blog about them, and we all have a good laugh and a “yeah, me too.”

The greatest thing about knitting is that it’s so forgiving. 99% of the time it’s possible to just pull the needles out, rip the yarn free from mistaken stitches, and do it over again. No harm, no foul. So I’ll be ripping out everything I did last night and doing it over again, including the slipped stitches this time. It’s just the way things go sometimes.

(Actually, no. The real greatest thing about knitting is that I have perfectly fit, delightfully customized wool socks, scarves, hats and gloves that I could never buy in any store.)