Knit One, Purl Too: A Knitlog

I’ll start with the bad news first: as you can see, the pretty purple hat did not survive a trip to my parents’ house last week. They have a Golden Retriever with an oral fixation and a wee anxiety disorder; chewing is his coping mechanism. He was so excited to see me, and obviously pleased as punch that I had brought a knitting bag full of items with soft, chewy centers. The only thing not in a Ziploc for traveling was the finished hat; I like to think the hat sacrificed itself so that the raglan sweater might live on.

So I have another hat on the needles, and the raglan sweater is progressing - a progress photo would look about three inches longer than the last one. The good news? My progress photo would be boring because I appear to have picked up the mother of all dropped stitches successfully last night - I noticed it four rows down, in the middle of some KFB increases for the shoulder seam. I was nervous enough about fixing it that it took me four days to come back to it - I can’t imagine what steeking will be like!

I looked at Knitty’s excellent instructions for picking up dropped stitches, but my knitting was harder to read because everything was at an angle thanks to the increases. I poked and prodded and pulled, worrying that I would have to frog back, but luck and patience were on my side - soon enough I had straightened everything out. Elizabeth Zimmermann’s good advice about picking up dropped stitches (”you’ll know when it looks right, and if it doesn’t, let the stitch down and try again”) held true, and I found myself saying “Hey, that looks pretty good!”

I’ve joined at the base of the v-neck and have about 20 rows to go before I divide for the sleeves - when I was KIPing with the sweater last week, people kept asking what I was making - now I can say “A sweater with no dropped stitches!”