Anatomy of a Knitting Disaster

My latest blog is supposed to be about what makes a great knitter.  Instead, it has turned into a tale of woe...you know the thing..."when good projects go bad".

It all started well enough.  I signed up for a Mystery KAL (Knit-a-long), which for those who aren't familiar, is a pattern that is released to the knitters in stages.  The design becomes apparent as you progress with the steps.  The design was a boy's or unisex jumper (I assumed it was a top of some sort).  I had chosen Wendy Sorrento, a lovely soft cotton/acrylic mix from my store, in a mid blue colourway.

So I was off to a good start until I realised that I had done one of the cables incorrectly and hadn't increased enough stitches along the way.  No matter I thought, the cable snafu doesn't look obvious and I can fix the stitch numbers when I separate the arm stitches.  So far so good.

 A scrunched up look at progress

I duly placed arm stitches on waste yarn to finish later, joined front to back with a tight knit stitch (not tight enough but again, could be fixed later) and continued to follow the pattern.

Then....the inevitable happened....I managed to cock up another cable and now it really WAS obvious...Grrrr.  I toyed with the idea of frogging back but I’d read on the KAL forum in Ravelry that you could actually just frog the affected section, leaving the good stuff untouched.  Apparently Yarn Harlot explained this technique in glorious colour on her blog.

Wow!  I thought, somewhat naively in hindsight.  I can do this!  So, while the grandbaby was in daycare, which was about the only good decision I’d made so far, I proceeded to rip out the cable rows in preparation for the great cable rescue.

Cable unpicked and looking scary

Looks messy doesn’t it?  I wish I could say it got better...but it didn’t.  A few failed attempts and tangled needle cords later, I decided to cut my losses and frog back a few rows instead. 
This I duly did.  I then started to re-do the cable and...wait for it....read the pattern wrongly and did yet another bodgy cable!  Another frog later, a bit further back this time, a double check of the pattern and I was raring to go.

That's it!  I'm starting all over again!

Yep you guessed it!  Yet another error and I was done.  Time to reboot the jumper!  So, I’ve just cast on and have put it in a safe place (safe from me anyway!) until I have the strength to have another go...*sigh*