How to fix lace mistakes

I have been knitting outdoors boy scout camping in the gorgeous Texas Hill Country and drinking earl grey tea from my charity store enamel tea cup and saucer. It has been a very busy week and I really needed it. Ah bliss!

 

 

 

I am really enjoying this pattern Nurmilintu by Heidi Alander. It's made up of alternating sections of garter stitch and charted lace. The yarn feels good and the tones are pleasing. It's Cascade Heritage 150 Paints - sale yarn purchased in the summer in Yarn Durango, Colorado.
 

I thought I could manage the lace sections without stitch markers. I'll just wing it I thought. I can do it. I often go without a stitch marker in crochet, the one that you usually put in at the beginning of a row when working in the round. I like a little challenge.

 

However, I messed up A LOT. So in went the stitch markers. And then even with these little handy guides sitting on my needles at 9 stitch pattern repeat intervals I messed up. I'd forget a yarn over or not make a note of my row when I put my work down. And then I'd have to go back. But as you may well know, taking back a lace pattern is not straightforward!

 

I worked out that it's easier to take back a little section between stitch markers, turning the work to it's wrong side to see the stitches more clearly. But there must be online guidance for this. Ta dah - I just found an amazing resource on The Twist Collective A knitter's guide to fixing mistakes. Part 1 is Minor Blunders with a whole load of useful info. Part 2 is Average Gaffes dealing with mistakes in cable and colorwork.

And then I found an excellent video on the Craftsy blog with Laura Nelkin How to fix lace knitting mistakes showing how to make a missing yarn over and work a forgotten decrease on the next row.

 

Obviously the easiest way to fix a mistake is not to make it in the first place and here is a great article from Poststitchbox with five ways to count your rows when knitting. I'm a fan of pink highlighter tape personally. What's your preferred method of keeping track?

 

 

How to untangle yarn [try it yourself or find a yarn wrangler]

Every now and then a yarn-related story will hit the mainstream news, be shared around social media and become a topic of conversation even amongst your non-yarny friends. How fun! In late December, the Wall Street Journal published "Knitters with hopelessly knotted yarn call 'Detanglers' for help".

"Many knitters find their craft a tranquil and even meditative pastime - until knots and tangles in their yarn send them into a fury. But for one group of fanatics, there is nothing more satisfying than a hopelessly tangled web. Daphne of Melbourne, Australia, once paid about $50 on eBay for a 25-pound box of snarled yarn, simply for the pleasure of untangling it."

I loved reading this article and was already aware of the therapeutic benefits of untangling yarn for some. However at the time of reading I thought I'm not one of those silly people who would ever get my yarn in a tangle. I'm far too careful.

But last month I was merrily winding a skein of expensive lace weight yarn on my swift and ball winder. I've never worked with lace weight yarn before I realize. Then the yarn breaks and I start a new ball. And then it breaks again. And in one of those rather vacant moments I just decide rather than start a new ball I'll wind on top of the ball and all will be well. Later when I start to crochet with the yarn the ball collapses leaving me with the worst tangle I've ever witnessed (see above). Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I now realize I should have wound my yarn very slowly because lace weight yarn is so very delicate. And winding a ball on top of a ball was just downright silliness that I will not repeat.

Anyway I decided I would see if detangling was relaxing for me and found the following tips on what to do:

Jessie Rayot from Jessie at Home has a helpful photo tutorial that I rather like on how to untangle yarn. Katrin Kania gives tips on how to untangle yarn using your swift how to untangle a skein of yarn I particularly love Katrin's instruction on how to calculate the time required:

"To get an estimation of how long it will take you, make a wild guess. Then multiply the time of your wild guess by two - that's the pessimistic wild guess. Now multiply that by ten, and you have an estimate."

I spent several evenings on my untangling project and I can report that it was very absorbing. But now it has been put aside, still on my swift, looking just as tangled as when I started. Perhaps I will need to bring in a Yarn Wrangler from the Knot a Problem group on Ravelry. Roving Crafters describe how to get the experts involved in their article: never fear the yarn wranglers are here