R.I.P.

Impressed? Well don’t be. This seemingly flawless fragment of the Fuzzy Reception cardi is indeed deeply and irretrievably flawed. It measures (correction: measured) 15 inches wide but is supposed to be 18 inches wide, which means that were I to continue I’d end up with a cardi suitable only for a toy poodle. Never mind that I knit a gauge swatch, and it appeared that I was knitting exactly on gauge. Somehow I funked it, and there was nothing for it but to rip every last stitch out and return the yarn to a primordial squiggly mass. R.I.P.

It was rather painful. Last night, I fortified myself with a glass of Zinfandel and halfway watched a DVD of All Creatures Great and Small, which is always guaranteed to portray much more heart-rending catastrophes than anything I could create on a pair of knitting needles. I figured that between the anesthetic properties of the wine and the distacting properties of All Critters, I’d make it through the depressing task of unraveling, without focusing too much on how many hours of toil were gurgling down the drain.

I haven’t had much spare time to knit lately, but tonight I’d carved out some time to catch up with my brother on the phone. I haven’t talked to him since January—not since I detected that he’d discovered my blog and I made a panicky phone call to him at his job and forbade him to read it ever again. Anyway, we had plenty of catching up to do and I figured I could start over with the cardi—this time on larger needles.

Well, three hours and six pee breaks later (my brother has a self-described "walnut-sized bladder"), I am not much closer to recouping my progress on the cardi. I got about two inches of the diagonal slip-stitch pattern knitted, but something went haywire and I had to rip back an inch. So I’ve got the rib stitch border and one inch of pattern. (Hold your applause.) The chat with my brother, however, was great and loooong overdue. For example, he’s thinking of getting married! OK. I’d heard a rumor from my sister, but in addition to being famous for having a walnut-sized bladder, my brother is famous for indecision and procrastination, so I will hold off for a while on buying that sister-of-the groom dress. Komma, if you’re reading this (and you know you shouldn't be), I am only stating known and thoroughly documented facts (re: the walnut, the indecision, and the procrastination).