Flummoxed

I have mentioned the lace project on this blog. It is challenging. I am over it and only continuing because I am of the stubborn variety with an overdeveloped sense that projects should be finished regardless of, well, most anything.

I spent several hours on it last night and got through 5 rounds. That's approximately 79 gazillion stitches. I worked on it for most of lunch today and finished a round and a fourth.

Still, I am on round 20 and there are only 26. Several more hours of knitting, to be sure, and then there's the blocking, which I assume will take another two hours of me hunched on my guest room floor, stabbing hundreds of straight pins into foam boards, but I am Powering Through.

Then I check my e-mail. Errata have been posted. "There are two extra repeats of the lace pattern in the written instructions. To make it match with the chart, knit rows 1 – 16, 25 and 26 (skip rows 17 – 24)."

Um, I'm on round 20. I can't rip out the rows. Lace, ladies and gentlemen, is unrippable. Cannot be done. It will result in tears, the burning of yarn in a ceremonial pit, and possibly abandoning knitting in favor of ceramics.

I took a few deep breaths and studied the chart and written instructions carefully. I believe that I can finish round 20 and then knit rounds 25 and 26. If I'm reading the chart right, which is always a big gigantic if, that will finish one of the two extra repeats. As the designer noted in his e-mail, it's not a big deal if you do extra repeats. I'll just have a bigger border.

Now, I should feel relieved.

This eliminates four rounds of knitting.

2,736 stitches

The end is not only in sight, but closer than I had anticipated.

So, why does this make me so mad?