WIP Wednesday: Blues over the Blue

Knitting:
I skipped posting last week because I was just so frustrated with this pattern and myself. I took the shawl with us to the park to watch 4th of July festivities 2 weeks ago. After a long day of knitting I found several counting mistakes that I simply couldn't brain my way around. For the rest of the evening I worked on my travel socks. Once home I realized that I'd made mistakes so far back that there was simply no answer but to rip everything out and start over. So, by the time last Wednesday rolled around, I was just a little past where I'd previously been the week before.

This Monday I finally gave into my feeling of "there's something not right about this" and counted my stitches. I'd just finished 6 repeats of chart b and a full chart c. I know I'm not the only one to occasionally ignore the inner knitter when something doesn't feel right, even the Yarn Harlot has posted about it. I'd had that niggling feeling since repeat 2 of chart b and yet I'd kept on going. So I give in and count my stitches. 155. Wait ... what? The pattern says that if I did 4.5 repeats of B then I should have 269 stitches and I did 6.5 repeats.  

I'm looking at the pattern, at the charts, at my knitting and slowly I realize my mistake. I'd read each line of the chart (with it's repeated block in the center of each line) as though it went all the way across the row rather than as what to do with the stitches in each of the 4 sections of the shawl. That explained why the outer sides had grown and the two inner sections hadn't. That explained why I wasn't using the yardage I'd expected to use.

Gods bless my poor Husband. He held me, offered me chocolate, and helped to unravel all my hard work and wind it back into a ball. Had this been for myself I would have tossed it into a corner, buried it under yarn, and never spoken of it again until I was ready to deal with it.

The pattern really isn't that hard. I don't want to scare off anybody that's kind of looked at the pattern and thought about knitting it. It's really not that hard. I promise. The reason it's been so difficult for me? I started this in a time of high stress and new medication for pain management, the two combined meant that I didn't eat for practically 3 weeks and I was so brain fogged that I couldn't think straight. I'd been clearer when I started the pattern the second time but I just kind of blindly followed what I'd done previously, thinking that I'd just lost count somewhere along the way. I probably had ... I would have been hard pressed to tell you my name a few of those days.  So, here I am, 3 weeks later, basically exactly where I was before. I'm going to knit my fingers to the bone to get this finished soon as I feel bad about it taking so long when I know it's been eagerly looked for.



The purple line marks the end of Chart A. Previously I did a lifeline for the end of each Chart B repeat .... I think I'll do every other one this time. Please ..... if you see a mistake in the knitting now ... Tell Me. Be gentle though.

Reading:

Stephen King's The Dark Tower Graphic Novel: The Fall of Gilead as written by Peter David. I am a huge Stephen King fan girl. I've been collecting these for a bit now and waiting to read them. Because of their location on the shelves I seemed to always miss them so I started keeping a To Read List that held only the next 4 - 6 books I was going to read. Each of these graphic novels have only taken a couple days to read. I'm in awe of the gorgeous coloring of the art, the fantastically done writing, and the faithfulness to the feel of the original works. I would have loved them for being a part of the Dark Tower world, but it's a delight to also love them for being so incredibly good.