Disaster !

(It took a lot to not write that title in CAPS and without excessive !'s)
I'll be doing 2 whole blogs today; this is the first; rant-type blog then later I'll do the nice happy blog :)

----Disaster you say? ----

Yes I do say. I have realised that it would take a long time to save up enough money to start the big project; so I decided to do a relatively smaller project, A bolero for myself. I printed out the pattern; only looking at what Yarn I needed and the needles I needed. (as in; not the actual pattern)

I purchased all the yarn(5 balls of Rico cotton in colour 14(pomegranate) if anyone's interested) and 2.75mm circular needles(which are frigging tiny) and cast on... then I noticed the sleeves had frills (or flounces as they called them) and I don't suit frills..... so I had to calmly skim past a couple of lines to where they actually start the non-frilly knitting.

I cast on 89 stitches and worked the cuff; (more of the cuff than it said; but I don't like my elbows) and read the pattern after that... well I thought I had.

After 7 days, and a lot of yarn, I got to the shoulder and the pattern says I should have 129 stitches. I count them.... I got 100. I count them again pleading with my brain saying 'count right damn you'.... still 100.... I give them to my mum and she counts 100..... I pace the pattern seeing where I could have left out 29 stiches (which is about 2 inches worth of knittting alll the way up the sleeve) and I read the two little words I had missed....

I read

'Increase by 1 every 4 rows'

The pattern actually said

'Increase by 1 every 4 rows each side'

..... I was horrified. I had started increasing every 4 rows once..... instead of twice (as the pattern wanted).... the diagram makes my problem clear. it maens I would have to restart from where I started to increase..... row 27........ I was on row 98.... thats 70 rows of wrong knitting.... I've had to frog back before but never that much... I poured myself quite a sizeable glass of rose wine (Hardy's; it was lovely) and set to work. I laughed as my dad was on 'roll up the ball again' duty.

I sat on my bed last night wondering if I had enough energy in me to do an all nighter; a knitting all nighter.... I wrote up my mistakes in my notes and made notes to get me back to where I was before. I made it to row 30 before sleep got the better of me. writing this now I hope to be on row 40 by the end of the day.

More (happier) blog after Lunch. Thanks for reading this knitting rant as far as this :). you've made a happy woman very old.

Luv form Aki X