Knitting nightmare

I've made a mistake....a very big mistake...and I've been trying really hard to not feel down about it all weekend. I knitted a whole sleeve wrong. Not just any sleeve...a complicated one with various increases and decreases and 3 different colours. It took me a whole week to knit that sleeve and now it needs to be pulled out! Gutted -to say the least!

The sleeve is from the little jumper I'm knitting from an old pattern and its been pretty complicated.

I think I choose a bit if a difficult one for my first project using colour fair isle stylee. Its been a bit of an emotional roller coaster since I started it. I'm knitting it in 4ply when the pattern is meant to be 3ply so I had to figure out a different size of needles to use. Then I had to work out how to fair isle knit. Then there was complicated increases so I joined a knitting group and thankfully one of my new friends was able to teach me how to accommodate for the increases and use stitch markers. Then I drew a chart to help me keep track of the pattern repeat..then I realised I had colour coded it wrong and had to take out half of a pattern repeat.

I got through it though and was making good headway. I had already done the back of the jumper and I  really wanted to push on with it as there are loads of other things I want to knit and make but I'm not keen on having too many things on the go at once.

This is the back, finally finished!

But after a week of knitting for at about 2 hours every day and then stitching in all the loose ends I compared it to my other sleeve only to find it was too dam small!!! I missed out a crucial increase row after I had done the rib which would have increased the stitches to 90 from 74. So the whole bloomin' thing was knitted on 74 stitches when it should have been 90!

But hey ho....what can you do? I still really want  to finish the thing. So I'm having a rest from it for a few days and I'll just try to forget about it...put it down to experience.

Have you ever made a big mistake when knitting up something? How did you cope?

Planning, packing and stitching too...of course!

I've been busy trying to get organised for my upcoming trip over the past few weeks. Me and the hubby are going to Panama and South America for 7 weeks and we leave in just 2 weeks time! We only decided to go about 5 weeks ago so it all been a bit of a rush to get ready. Here is a map of our planned route....

My cousin has put us in touch with one of his close friends who is a tour organiser based in Lima and she has been so amazing!... putting an itinerary together for us and she is even picking us up at the airport in Lima. We just have to sort out a week in Panama ourselves. 


In between ticking off my several to do lists I've been working on the vintage knitting pattern I found at my parents house in the summer. I thought it didn't look to difficult....I could work out all the abbreviations and when I first read it I thought..yeh sure...I can work it out. Hmmmm.....so far its certainly not been a smooth ride. On the positive side I can't believe how much I have learned by the section I have done so far. 

A few weeks ago I got soooo stuck with it. The pattern presumed I had special powers and could work out complicated increases with minimal information. I seriously got so stuck and in such a state. After a frustrating phone call to my Mum, who couldn't help me figure it out (and I don't blame her, it was really complicated especially when she could't actually see what I was doing) I turned to Ravelry and searched for knitting groups in my area. What were the chances....? There was a group meeting that night at the MAC. 


Everyone I met was so lovely and friendly and I got the much needed help from Minty who even gave me some stitch markers to help me on my way. It all seemed so much clearer. I needed to draw out a chart of the pattern..which seemed simple...until I made about 3 mistakes in that which then lead me having to undo 3 rows (of 106 stitches!), In process I also managed to drop stitches...thanks you tube videos for teaching my how to pick these back up again! 

But since then I've been on a roll with it...and now managed to get a huge chunk done of the back panel.

So now I've managed to figure out how to do knitting 'a la fair isle'....pick up dropped stitches...use stitch markers...turn complicated instructions into a chart...incorporate increases to follow the pattern. Not bad I reckon! And now I can't put it down!  


I quite fancy making a new wallet for my trip though and found some great tutorials online last night by very purple person so thats my job for next weekend I think!