Making My Mother Proud

With great pride, last night I spread out the newly completed body of my Town & Country cardigan so that I could take a few moments to enjoy it's beauty. One thing was puzzling me, though, because the pieces at the top hadn't quite come out the same - as they should have.

The first section I did - the right front - was the offending portion. I knew there was a problem there, but it took me a while to figure it out. Can you see it?

How about here?

That's right....there's a shorter zig in the middle where I turned around and zagged one row too quickly.

Also complicating the problem, the row numbers on the chart didn't line up properly with their corresponding rows. When I did the neck shaping for that first piece I hadn't caught the mistake...and so my shaping was ever so slightly off.

Those two errors - both user and pattern - meant that I didn't catch on right away to the fact that this whole piece was two rows too short AND I had made what I felt to be a fairly obvious mistake in the pattern.

The debate then becomes whether or not to fix....and I suppose you know the answer to that before I even have to say anything.

First I unraveled that section back to the point where the neck shaping had begun.

Then I placed the stitches on either side of the offending section on DPN's and....

Take a deep breath - especially those of you who are faint-hearted -

Dropped the stitches all the way down to where the mistake was. (For the record, that was almost back to the place where I had divided the body for the sleeves!) Another DPN was then used to pick up the live stitches so that I could...

Reknit them all back up! I wound up leaving one dropped stitch on the left side because it gave me just enough wiggle room to make the whole process comfortable for my hands.

A crochet hook and a matter of a couple of minutes helped me to pick that last stitch back up. I then gave the whole thing a few good tugs, put it all back on one needle and

Reknit the shaping and cast off for the shoulders.

Problem solved.

My mother is happy.

And so am I.