Part One: Damn And Blast It!

I've been riding high on a creative wave of inspiration for a few weeks and I knew it was only a matter of time before I came across a glitch. The 'Knitted Necklace' project is being shelved for a short period because I've come to realise that I need to re-learn some basic stuff if I'm not going to repeatedly screw up.

I'm very careful about how I use the precious hours I get when my son is at nursery (three hours, three mornings a week). That time gets divided between having a shower, doing household drudgery and squeezing in a bit of something to do with blogging (reading other blogs, researching, writing etc.). So, last Thursday, I had allocated half an hour to sitting and getting on with the knitted necklace, which was now about eight inches in length.

I'd realised that the reason I find purling tricky is because I am not holding the working yarn in a way that produces enough tension. Apparently, I can get away with this when doing knit stitch but purl requires good tension to get the yarn you loop around the right-hand needle to go underneath the left needle easily. I thought I would experiment with trying to hold the yarn differently and soon found quite a comfortable way to do it (winding it around my ring finger on my left hand). However, a few rows in, I noticed that the stitches were looking awkward. I counted them: 17. How the holy jebus did I gain three stitches?! Right, I thought, it's fine, I think I can see at what point I went wrong and I'll just undo each row until I'm at the right point again.

Row number one undid just fine. Row number two started to look dodgy and I realised I must've dropped a stitch too at some point but I'd gone past that bit. Ok, never mind, I'll keep going. Hmmm, now it's looking even more dodgy...and why is my yarn suddenly sticking out all over the place? Oh dear. Think I've messed this up irrevocably, I'll have to start again.

I began to tear the whole thing back to the beginning but suddenly the whole thing snagged and started to knot itself. Bugger. Massive bugger. I tried to untie the knot but the wool was stretching itself out of shape and I couldn't get it to budge at all.

Out came the scissors and I now have a Knitted Necklace that looks like this:

Balls.

I am most cross at having messed up some beautiful yarn and so I am putting it away for now because I can't be trusted with it. I will not be daunted by this set-back. Rather, it is giving me the opportunity to go back to basics and really practise perfecting my stitches before I try doing anything else with my precious wool. If I repeat this often (and loudly) enough then I will start to believe it. I also might get sectioned but, hey, it's all the name of art, people!

The new project is going to be 'The Neck-Warmer of Mossiness'. I have some spare Sirdar Supersoft Acrylic Aran in Olive from the ongoing 'Blanket of Death' project (olive didn't go with the other colours, so it's not being used). I have decided to learn moss stitch, both because it seems appropriate (moss colour, moss stitch) and because it entirely involves knits and purls and that means I'll get brilliant at both (in theory).

Ah well, onwards and upwards, as they say ('they' probably need a slap, the smug bastards).