Arrrrrgh!

[Louisa]

Great attitude! And like all the others, I'm going to repeat that you just need to hang in there.

My big challenge is sizing and gauge. I've never really payed any attention cause it just didn't matter. But for Christmas I was trying to make a hat for my BF. Yeesh I never realized he had such a big head! I had to frog and restart the thing three times because I'd get about 4 inches into it, try it on him and realize it would squeeze his head too much!

Anyway, it just takes practice and experimenting is what I'm trying to say. Hang in there. Sometimes when I'm feeling frustrated I just sit back and look at the pretty colour of my yarn and molest it a bit and then I feel better that I can make something nice out of it.

[landolphe]

For a long, long time, my only recovery tactic was to rip out back to the dawn of time and start over. Effective, but not efficient. Even after having made several pretty complicated projects, the "death wish rip out" remained my only recourse. I have become a bit better at "seeing" the error and its implications for the surrounding stitches and adjoining rows. And yet ....

Last night, while making a simple garter stitch scarf, my dogs pulled my knitting off the sofa onto the floor. I am working on US 35 needles with double strands of super bulky, boucle and fuzzy yarn--kinda like weaving tugboat tow-line with sawed-off broomsticks!--so of course, some of the work slipped off the needles. I did my best to put it back on the needle and kept kitting. Five rows later, I realized that my stitch count had somehow become 12/row in place of the pattern's 10/row. Now: to rip out or not? No. I dived into the heart of the 5 12-stitch rows, pulled a few strings here and there, and managed to tighten up those rows enough that the vertical lines of the scarf are once again parallel.

Today, I am feeling good about my "non-destructive" recovery. Of course, fat and fuzzy yarn hides a multitude of errors.

Happy New Year to All,

Landolphe

[Jan in CA]

I didn't see this idea posted, but another thing you can do is take a scrap of yarn or dental floss and thread it through the stitches on the needle when you know the rows below are done properly. Move it up or add another as you go along (every 10-20 or whatever rows) so if you DO have to frog you don't have to all the way back. I use that method things like sweaters mostly now and I used it a LOT when I first started.

[Knitting_Guy]

Great tips and support, thanks loads.

[Krystal]

I had trouble casting on and making a simple knit scarf. just knit stitch..lol I kept adding stitches! I started off with 18 and ended up with 28.

You should have seen that one! lol

Hang in there!

me too!! it drove me nuts. by the end of it i wa wondering why it was taking me 10 min to knit a row but when I started it was only 3. Haha.