The Importance of Reading

I've started a sweater. It's top down, so once the yoke increases are done it feels like the rows are four miles long. Still, it's been going fairly well. Monday night I told myself how fantastic I was when the stitch count shockingly turned out just as it was supposed to. I spread it out, admiring it.

I started the next row of the chart and thought, "Huh. I'm surprised they have a foop* at the beginning of this pattern and not at the end." Immediately, the blood rushed to my head and I scrambled for the pattern.  

The chart has eight rows.

The directions CLEARLY say, "Cont to work in patt est’d until 18 total rows of Deep Waffle Stitch have been worked, ending with a WS row."

Let's review the math.

8 + 8 = 16

16 does not equal 18.

I'd read 18 and then told myself that 18 rows was two repeats of the chart. It clearly was not.

 Talamh cardigan knit in Blue Moon Fiber Arts' 

BFL sport in The New Color of Love

Someone is going to argue that nobody can tell if the foop is there or not. (You certainly can't from this picture.) I understand the argument. However, I'm too close to the beginning of this thing to pretend this doesn't bother me and carry on. The sweater went into time out. I'll rip it back when it hurts less.

Fine. No sweater. I'll start a sock. A boring, ribbed sock.  There's no need to even look at a pattern.

This worked really well when I was swapping out a hard drive and rebuilding a computer yesterday.  I have learned that computers have a sick sense of humor. They will pretend to install something that takes half an hour, but as soon as you walk away they will put up a message box that needs clicked before it will do anything else, such as, "Is your language still English?"  Of course it's still English! I told you that thirty seconds ago! Why are you asking me again?

It's asking me again because it wants to make sure I am held captive by its foolish questions.

I have no idea how IT people manage to remain calm without knitting. Now that I am on to the evil ways of the computer, I sit patiently in front of it knitting a sock while it randomly stops installing and asks me mundane questions to which it already knows the answers.

So, the sock was great for time spent in front of the computer, but it was too boring to knit on last night. I was feeling restless.

You know what's not too boring? The Garden Gate socks. They are intense. You have to pay attention. They're slow.

Garden Gate socks knit in Dream in Color Smooshy in Wisteria colorway

I was feeling pretty good about the start of them. After a few rows of the leg chart, I decided to reread the key just to make sure I was knitting everything correctly. At the bottom of the page, it's clearly written, "Repeat these rounds 3 more times and then work round 1 once more continuing on to the leg."

I hadn't repeated them. This means I basically have no cuff and my socks may fall down.

Another rip.

Remember pet rocks? Maybe I'll take up painting those for a hobby.

*Technical term**

**Not really.