Tuesday, January 09, 2007

The Mind takes on the Heart

I am a perfectionist, a trait well-suited to graduate studies in ecology but not so useful for knitting. Yes, I am that knitter who will rip out rows or drop stitches to fix a purl that should be a knit. I hate mistakes and take great strides to avoid them.

Alas, new-mother brain means that my error radar is a bit erratic. In my latest knit, Na Craga (an Alice Starmore Aran) I miss-crossed a cable in an early pattern repeat on the sleeve.

I conducted a public survey (n=1) and found that the average person could not find the error. However, any knitter would immediately see the mistake and would shun me as a careless knitter (although it's difficult to see the error in the photos - I'd strive for better photos, but I need to feed a wee one).




The old me (she who had loads of free time and was not tied to a baby nor trying to finish a PhD) would have ripped back all 9 pattern repeats to fix the miss-crossed cable. Alas, the old me has been buried deep beneath a pile of dirty cloth diapers and the new me frantically searched the internet for a better solution.

A better blogger would have before and after pictures. Alas, there are no after pictures. While my mind has firmly settled on the easy way out, my heart still wants me to rip back all the way to the offending row, fix the cable and carry on with my head held high, knowing my work was free of such an egregious error. Since I have no intention of doing this, it’s just a matter of time before my heart throws in the towel and lets my mind have it’s way. I’ll keep you posted.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you know you can drop just the cable stitches, unravel them and cable back up. Much less time, and less angst.

Teresa said...

I wouldn't rip the whole sleeve out. I think your fix of duplicate stitching is fine. If you must fix it just drop those stitches down.
Just my $0.02 worth.