I think if I had become a knitter when I was 16 and believed that perfection and control was attainable in all areas of life, I would have ripped back to my dental floss lifeline and started over.
Since I'm twice that age now and I believe I have practically no control over the bulk of things that occupy my world now, I just looked at the double strand and carried on.
Is it better to go on or go back? I have such a struggle with this question in real life (as opposed to my knitting life (?!?)) as well.. I want to set high expectations, but I don't want them to be so high that feel like a freaking failure everyday of my life.
Doris
6 comments:
keep going!
I say - look back, see the YO and say "I can fix that on the next row", shrug and proceed.
Life is more interesting when we make mistakes - the kudos come when you finally learn from repeating them over and over and over.....
Bwhahaha
Maybe it's not kudo's but accomplishments!
I think you should proceed. It really looks like you just picked up a yo and the purl row above it. See how the yo area on the left looks? It's like both of those strands are over your needle on the right. If you dropped one of the strands on the right (preferably the yo from 2 down), It will be perfect. I've done the same thing. And if you don't fix it, it wont show when you're finished. I worried about little mistakes too and now I can't find any of the 3 mistakes I made (I can still remember them, though). Good luck! It's going to be beautiful!
If you drop the strand that's lower in this picture when you come to it next, just knitting (or doing whatever you're supposed to) the upper strand, then not only will the mistake "not show" - it won't be a mistake! You'll have fixed it!
I probably fixed mistakes in this way - getting them when I came to them on the next row - in at least 10 or 15% of the rows I did when I made my Icarus. Getting good at this kind of fixing (which is mostly about seeing - noticing what the problem looks like, what it should look like - just like Heather pointed out in this case) is the best way to improve, I think. Nobody will every stop making mistakes - that wouldn't be human. And few humans can really take having to frog half of everything you knit (believe me, I seem to have been doing that lately). But fixing problems in one stitch by undoing or redoing it - or dropping the right strand, in this case - is a really satisfying accomplishment! Better than getting it right in the first place, if you ask me!
Lessons for life as well as knitting. :-)
BTW, if you drop it and it doesn't look right, try putting the strand you dropped back on the needle, and dropping the other. When it looks like the correct YOs, than you've got it. That's all there is to it.
Oh, and taking a picture can, as in this case, really help to see the forest for the trees. I have no idea why, but I sometimes see what's going wrong in a picture more easily than when the thing is in front of me.
Tink sometimes, move forward sometimes. Like others have said, fixing mistakes does help you learn more about knitting. But mistakes here and there don't ruin a beautiful piece like this. My Icarus has much more than 3 errors--probably more like 30. But as I look at it now (it's blocking, pictures soon!) I am incredibly impressed with myself for finishing something so lovely.
A knitting friend always tells me, if someone else notices mistakes in your knitting, it is a compliment to know they were looking that closely!
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