Negative Knitting

(in the sense of negative growth, not whinyness...)

I'm knitting the Cedar Leaf Shawlette by Alana Dakos. I'm using Sirdar Sublime 100% merino (so lovely!!) It's been going along fine, until I got to the end of the short row section yesterday. I counted the stitches inbetween my wraps - I had the correct number, but I'd just finished a RS row, not a WS row. So I decided to count my wraps.

18 on the left side (the side I was now at), and only 17 on the right side. I puzzled over it for a while. The pattern is so well written that it couldn't be an error, could it? I'd knit the shawlette once before, but I couldn't remember if I'd had any problems that time. So I counted again, in the vain hope that I'd counted wrong the first time.

Nope, still uneven. And I couldn't really fudge it without the shaping being completely uneven. Instead of lovely crescent shape, it would be a wonky banana shape. And nobody wants a wonky banana shawl, do they. (Or do they? I'm sensing a design opportunity here, lol) Anyway, I didn't want this shawl to be a wonky banana. So I counted and recounted.

The only thing I could think of was that I had missed a wrap on the right side of the shawl. But all my wraps had the correct amount of stitches between them. I peered and counted at my wraps, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

Then I saw it.

One of my stitches had two wraps around it.

The fourth wrap in...

I hadn't been using any sort of markers, just looking to see where the previous wrap was and working from there. So I'd evidently knit past a wrap, not seeing it because I was on the purl side, and reworked that stitch.

Sigh. There was nothing for it but ripping. Ripping back about 14 sets of wrap and turns with up to 200sts between each one. I think my heart broke just a little as I pulled the stitches off the needle.

I only pulled off the stitches in between the wraps that were correct, so I would only(!) have to rework those middle 200sts again (for another 14 sets of wrap and turn rows!) So in one fell swoop, all the knitting I'd done that day (about three hours) disappeared and so did most of my work from the day before. :(

Oh well. Enough time has passed now I can look on the bright side. I get to spend more time knitting the lovely Sublime yarn. There's always a positive :)