Frog!

I don't even have a picture for you, I'm not taking one. I've been working diligently on Harold sweater. I had just started to really see progress, when I realized that the mistake early on that I thought I could live with would bother me forever. I realized this as I was thinking about "the next time I make one of these sweaters I'll do that hem properly, and it will look nice" and "I hope I do the sleeves better" Oh man! I knew I had to rip it, or I just wouldn't be happy with the final product, or the rest of the knitting.

I should have done it before, but it took me so darned long to get through doing that part in the first place that I avoided it. MISTAKE! Now I'm not only redoing it, but I've ripped out hours of work, and I have to try to undo knitting the inside and outside of the them together, and then tink back a row, and then do it all over again. I have 240 stitches a row.

Ok, backup, here's the problem, I knit one of those hems where you do a provisional cast on and then knit 2 inches or whatever, then a purl row, then the front side for 2 inches then unzip the cast on and knit a stitch from the cast on together with a stitch from the outside part. Here's a old picture...before I messed it up:

Anyways, I was right to begin with, I had the two sides even, but then I started knitting the sides together and it seemed like the outside was shorter, and I was afraid that would make the bottom sort of swoop out. So I undid that and knit another row before doing the knitting together part. Well, now that it's a big longer, there is a big pucker on the outside, it's like you can tell there is a seem there, but the inside is beautiful and flat! Grrrrrr. It's the outside that should be beautiful and flat! So, last night I was happily (but not completely happily obviously) knitting along and in one split second I decided I must rip. I yanked the needle out and started pulling.... ugg, you wouldn't believe how long it took me to pull it out....it was just a mean reminder of how long I'd blindly knit refusing to admit the truth because I knew how much work it would be. Oh well, it's not even fully undone yet. I'm so dreading it. I hope I get it done today, but I doubt it. I still have all those k2tog to undo while separating it back onto the 2 separate needles so that I can undo the one side by one row. Did I mention that it's 240 stitches around....

Remind me why I decided I must knit a very large sweater for a man who doesn't wear knits.