Sunday, July 24, 2011

The worst thing to happen in a year

I have many things I love to knit, socks, anything for my daughter, and I have added Shawls to the mix. I have made shawls with worsted and fingering weight yarns, but I wanted to do lace. I figured it would take time, and I was right, but not because of the yarn or even the pattern, but because of a stitch called a NUPP.

A Nupp to anyone who has not tried it, is a stitch where you increase 1 stitch into 5,7 or dare I say 9. then you continue the row, and when you turn your work to purl you have to purl every single nupp together with all the stitches you increased.

Now if this were a larger weight yarn even fingering weight it would be I feel rather simple, still time consuming yes but no big deal, but when you are working with yarn that is the width of dental floss or even a strand of hair, it gets a little challenging, but I did it anyway, I took several pauses throught the year, made many a more things, that where nothing but simple, however everytime I looked into my yarn basket there it was staring at me, the continuous rows of nupps left to do, and I tried to bury it under many a more projects but I couldn't it would poke out at me and taunt me as an unfinished project.

Finally when it was one of the few UFO's I had left, I would sit and just bear it, and the nupps even as annoying as they were got a little easier, I did my best to make it not so chanllenging, I put markers after every nupp so I could find them when I had to purl, I used the smallest DPN I had to help me purl the stitches together and low and behold the rows of nupps where soon staring behind me and all that was left was to finish the shawl and I did, staying up well past what I should have and waiting for the moment I would block it and wear it.

That moment came to me last night, as I was so proud of my accomplishment, and as I went to bed with my new shawl drying on the dining room table I couldn't wait till morning to try it on.

Then morning came and what do I see when I go straight to my shawl, a hole, a rather large space where there shouldn't be. I am freaking out, I am looking to see what the problem is, did the yarn break? did a cat lay on it and break my yarn? did I pull it to tight when blocking? No none of these things happened, I do not know how I do not know when, but there was a live stitch undone some how some where and I was so mad. I couldn't undo the shawl, frogging lace you got to be crazy.

I did what I could only think to do, I got one of my crochet hooks and I fixed the hole and got all the stitches back to where they belonged and I did the only thing I could, I cut the stitch and tied it, then I took my clear nail polish and I basically glued it in place and it looks just fine now ( I took no pictures for I was in too much distress to worry about pictures) and now I have the final result



I am very pleased with the end result of both the shawl and of fixing of the shawl, I am going to do another lace shawl here in a bit, but let me tell you it will not have any NUPP's




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