Thursday, February 21, 2008

Using An Eclipse to Eclipse My Eclipse

“Truth is often eclipsed but never extinguished”~Titus Livy

Last night we had an eclipse. An eclipse is the partial or complete obscuring, relative to a designated observer, of one celestial body by another. And I did my best to go outside at intervals to take pictures.

And that is as far as I got as I deemed it better for all those that know me that I go to bed as I had a migraine. And I know what caused the migraine.
Let me start at the beginning. I cast on for the IQ several days ago and was telling Cyndy and she asked if I did the provisional cast on. I said "no, you didn't use it either". She said are you doing the picot or beaded. What? I just cast on the long tail! Oops. Wrong, I should have stopped right there. But we discussed the possiblities of crocheting beads on when it was done so I continued.
Then yesterday I emailed Cyndy with a tale of woe. She promised to keep my secret but I feel I should let her off the hook and admit to my own eclipse. See eclipse also means a disgraceful or humiliating end. So here goes...I was knitting away on the IQ. I took it out Tuesday night and things didn't look quite right but I figured I had not marked that I had finished a row so I went a head and did Row 14, 15, and 16. On Wednesday while taking my mother for blood work and to the hairdressers I did rows 17 thru 21. I came home and did 22,23,24, 21, 22, 23, and 24. I went to look at it and saw a section of stockinette. I am doing version B which is garter so I really look at it and when I thought things didn't look right Tuesday night, they weren't. The whole thing must have turned inside out! Oh but wait it gets better. I am not good at charts so I write each row out so while I was sitting in the hairdressers I wrote out row 21. Now the instructions state...Work Rounds 21-24 of Chart B 16 times. This morning when I was showing the man my inside/out error I remembered that row 21 changes. On certain rows you add two beads per repeat and others you add four beads per repeat. When I wrote it out I did four beads per repeat. OK so I have two extra beads on the one row. NOPE It gets even better. When I went looking at the chart it does not show ANY beads on row 25 which would be the second time you knit row 21. Excuse me but WTF? Why say do row 21-24 16 times say do row 21-28 8 times with row 25 not showing beads. I hate charts with stupid symbols but the pattern is so pretty.
So my IQ has four beads every four rows and there is not a snowballs chance in h*ll that I am going to rip back beaded lace to row 14 to change all these errors. I am discouraged though as it is not going to be what I wanted it to be. The yarn and the beads are beautiful and I failed them. So my fearless knitter status just hit rock bottom since I won't correct my mistakes but I did learn a lesson....read the instructions..... CAREFULLLY!

1 comment:

cyndy said...

oh my, that pattern can be tricky!

It will look beautiful anyway, and I don't think anyone will notice a bead out of place here or there! If you remember, my first IQ had bead errors too!

When I call my brother for computer help, he always says, "did you read the directions?" to which I answer "yes"...so he replies, "twice?" and I say "ofcourse." Then he always says, "go and read them again." ;-)