I looked at my original notes and saw that the plan was to work back and forth across the middle 3 repeats of the train. So I decided to just do that. I'll have to take the whole thing off the needles and steam block it again to make sure it's a nice shape, but I would have had to do that anyway. If I have to redo, well at least the short rows are going pretty quickly.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The crappy start. The crappiness came when I started my nice short row set up row and realized almost immediately that there was a mistake in the border. Let me say that again a mistake in the BORDER. As in, BELOW THE LIFELINE. How did I miss this previous? Well, when I placed the lifeline I counted to make sure i had the right numbers of stitches. I did. Unfortunately I had one seriously misplaced yarnover.
Here's a picture of the mistake.
Can you see it? It's kind of off to the left near my thumb. Trust me, it was there and it was annoying. Fortunately the mistake was in the very first repeat of the pattern, so I pulled out the lifeline, went in, fixed the mistake and then put the lifeline back in. Then realized that I'd only partially fixed the mistake. I'd added a yarnover where one was lacking, but hadn't realized that there was now an extra yarnover where there should have been none. I pulled the lifeline out AGAIN, knitted across, fixed the extra yarnover issue, pulled back what I'd just knitted (it was easier for me to find the mistakes if I tried to knit the next row, rather than just slipping the stitches), put the lifeline back in a second time and took a very deep breath. And a very large drink. Started again and this time, it worked.
Round about this time Justin got home and asked what I wanted to do with the evening. I told him I had absolutely no idea as I'd just spent the last hour staring at the same six stitches. He wisely removed himself from the room until I'd put a few rows between me and the mistake.
But after that, and after I had some dinner, the short rows went like a dream. Much like when I'd done the swatch, things didn't exactly match up, sometimes I had a few more or less stitches added on one side or the other b/c of changes in the pattern, but it all worked out pretty well. I'd say I'm about halfway through the short row portion and if all goes, well I might get that done tonight. If not it'll be days till it gets done since Arsenic & Old Lace starts up again tomorrow night and this is NOT dark theater knitting.
So here's the whole thing as it is now:
Getting very large. If you look closely for the purple lifeline, you can see where the border ends and the short rows begin.
Here are a couple of closer shots:
I'm really pleased with the contrast between the border and the short rows. The pattern looks great in the smaller stitches (even unblocked) and I feel like the border section is already getting more shape and definition from the stitches above.
I was still so excited this morning that I did another row before I went to work this morning. In fact - that's another thing that's nice - I can do a row in less than half an hour! I'm trying to really savor that since soon I'll be back to the full length of all the stitches and just doing the gradual decreases for either side of the train.
Here's a very, very close up showing the current end of the short rows.
Oh I'm so pleased right now. This is another savor moment. Because as I was typing I remembered that way back when I was swatching, I never did come up with a left leaning decrease swatch that I liked.
Eh, winging it is working reasonably well so far. I'll just keep doing that. Plus, blogging is much interesting if I screw up now and then. Stressful, but more interested. Cause otherwise it's going to be some very boring posts coming up.
So yes, savoring the moment. Savor. Savor. Savor.
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