Ripping Lace

Those are two words a knitter doesn’t ever want to hear – ripping lace. And yet I was not only hearing it, but doing it.

This is the summer of lace for me, specifically lace sweaters; the last of which is almost ready for release. But getting there involved a nerve-wracking interlude of ripping back the lace pattern. I kept trying on this tee shirt (with the shoulders pinned together, since they were to be finished later), and thinking, hmmm, it’s not long enough, just another 8 row repeat before the ribbing. Somehow I got off track; it was originally meant to be cropped and boxy, over a wide ribbed hem, but then with the short sleeves I thought that would be too square shaped. Then I thought about those generic length end-at-the-bottom-of-the-pants-waistband tops which are kind of boring, so I just kept adding on and adding on. And you know when you suspect you’ve done something that’s not really working out, but you think, oh, it’ll be fine, and keep going? Yeah, me too. So I had a couple inches of K1P1 rib before I finally admitted that it was neither tee shirt nor tunic, and just wrongly proportioned.

Sad enough to have to tear out all that time consuming ribbing; I had also to go back 16 rounds of lace pattern. No, I did not have a lifeline (and I do often put those in if I’m not sure I’ll like the next part of something. This time I went on blithely). Running a lifeline after the fact in lace is something I’ve found to be frustrating and inaccurate, so I ripped back fiercely to the last pattern round of what would be the last rep, then gingerly undid that as well. Then ever so carefully, with a tiny size 1, I went back stitch by stitch on the next rest round (thank goodness for rest rounds! only had to worry about recovering YOs and separating the decreases). Then reworked the pattern round with the correct needle, fixing up any little problems and adding stitch markers, and IT WORKED!

The knitting goddess was with me this time – a huge relief. And I discovered that gold glitter polish looks great with wisteria blue.

Next time, some more of the details of this last lace project; then the pattern itself!