The Long and Winding Road

Well, so much for speeding through the decreases...Soon enough I was at the underarm (last decrease), and was just congratulating myself on getting to move on to the increase portion. At last, the front of the jacket! Where my intense scrutiny of previous jackets made and photographed by others told me I'd have to be on my toes, and make careful color selections. I'd need to think really hard before I placed some bold color stripe that would visually add inches in places I already had plenty of inches. Now was my time to be 'arts-y', now I knew what I was doing, and was rolling merrily along. (Quite literally, since I took it with me as we drove up to Racine for a wedding last Saturday, with plenty of time to make some serious progress.)

But the knitting gods were not pleased. Afterward, when it was very quiet, I could hear them snickering at my presumption that I knew what I was doing. You see, I could see very easily where the double decreases were made on each garter ridge, at the beginning of the project, and only moved up the stitch marker for the center stitch every 4 or 5 ridges, just to prove that I was doing it correctly. But the increases....well, it wasn't quite as easy to tell which one was the center stitch. Using my same m.o. of moving the marker every 2 or 3 (or 4 or 5!) increase rows, I thought I was keeping the center stitch constant as I went on my merry knitting way. Spreading it out to admire my handiwork, I noticed that my 45-degree line of increases had veered off in a few places. (That's the point in my knitting that I get really quiet, just staring at it, willing it to look different than it really is. ) My straight line had turned into a long and (slightly) winding road.... which makes for a interesting car ride in the country, but in knitting, not so much.

Rip....rip....rip....rip... The stitch markers are being carefully carried up each and every row this time. I think I'm pretty much back to where I left off originally. ::sigh::