Practice makes proficient

Friday, after getting advice (including very helpful video links) from folks on the Maia forum on Ravelry, and a nice, long pep talk from Laura, I tackled fixing my beaded shawlette. This is the first time I've fixed a problem without tinking or frogging back whole rows, and as Laura promised, it really wasn't hard or even that scary once I started. Once I fixed the section of "broken" ribs, I knit a new row to make sure all stitches were accounted for. Success! Feeling a sense of accomplishment, I knit on. But now I thought to do frequent visual checks to make sure all was going according to pattern. So the next time I made the same mistake in the same section, I only had to drop and redo each stitch on one row instead of four rows, and did it confidently because of the practice I'd had. Sheesh. I knit on again. I got to that same section, and realized I was going to end up with another offset row! So I stopped, counted (yes, I had the correct number of stitches), thought and then figured out the fix - I needed to add a stitch to one side of that section, and decrease a stitch on the other side. A few more rows confirmed the fix, and I am now a better knitter than I was before.

But do you see what I saw in my newly "alert knitter" state?

An errant row of purl stitches across the left side of a leaf, waaay back near the beginning. No fixing THAT, and it would probably take less time to grow my hair long enough to cover my mistake than to frog back that far and reknit it! I'll just call it my "humility line."

Back to knitting, because it helps keep my mind off the ewes who are not lambing at . . .