Rippit, just rippit!

I was going to take a photo of my Diamond Fantasy Shawl tonight, but as I was laying it out I spied a mistake on the edge. Somehow or another I managed to shift a whole row of the pattern off by at least a couple of stitches. The YO that ends up right before the garter stitch edging was pretty distorted, and you could very obviously see that the pattern wasn't right from that point on. I briefly considered leaving it, then came to my senses and decided that ripping would be the better part of valor.

After frogging about 3 inches, I was able to pick up a complete row of 81 sts. Now I just have to figure out where in my pattern I am. *sigh* Luckily, I am inspired by Cara's finished DFS to keep on knitting.

Also on the chopping block: the cover sweater from Fall Vogue 2005. I decided to try this design from Annie Modesitt, but instead of using her twisted garter stitch pattern I am using my Chocolate Cherry handspun, which gives a similar look without all the extra work. The sweater/swatch was about 8" in diameter before it hit me that I had increased one too many times and the whole project needed to frogged. I probably could have just tinked back to the part where I increased incorrectly, but I decided this morning that I wanted to add some brown Blue Sky Alpaca yarn into the pattern and it would just be easier to re-knit everything. Another thing bugging me was that there was a pretty big hole in the center of the sweater. Annie's instructions tell you to cast on some sts and start increasing, knitting between each increase. Unfortunately she doesn't tell you what kind of CO to use, and most circular COs leave a hole. It might have been tightened up after all was said and done, but I just wasn't happy with it. So the cover sweater took a trip to the frog pond tonight as well.

The plan is to start again tomorrow, using an I-cord cast on so eliminate the hole, while knitting randomly with my handspun and the Blue Sky alpaca yarn. Hopefully we'll have pics up by Monday-ish.