It reminded me of the lengths I went to in fixing a mistake when I was a fairly new knitter. Lack of knowledge, fearlessness and obstinacy are a deadly combination in such circumstances.
It was back in the days when the February Lady Sweater was first published. I saw this divine pattern race through my friends' feeds on Ravelry and I had to make one. I worked my way through the garter top and onto the lace. Quite a way along, I noticed a hideous mistake way back. It had taken me so long to do the lace that I didn't want to rip back. Oh, what should a knitter do in this instance? Cockily, I thought I knew the answer - knit to the stitch that lives vertically above the mistake and just drop it off the needle and let it unravel down, fix the mistake and just bring the stitch back up.......so I did.
And horrified myself at the damage I wrought.
And in trying to fix it had to drop more stitches further back.
And felt close to tears.
So, having lost a couple of hours by this point, I tried writing down what was happening as I unravelled yet another repeat. (Remember, I was a new knitter, each repeat took so long that unravelling one was a painful process). It didn't work. I did not have the vocabulary / charting skills to capture what I was doing, but I did start having a vague idea of what the stiches were doing.
Finally the penny dropped and as I sacrificed yet another repeat, I took a photo as each row was unravelled, then worked back from those.
It took a long time, some mistakes and many curse words, but eventually, and proudly, I picked it all back up, in pattern. It probably took longer than ripping back and reworking would have done, but I learnt such a lot from it
Five years later, the cardi is still going strong and I can't tell where the mistake and fixing happened
If you want to see more pics, feel free to have a look at my Rav page
