Fulmar Progress

Yes, the blue really is this vivid. I love it.

This is a very slow knit, but oh-so-satisfying. What we have there is three pattern repeats of the ribbing, topped by two chart repeats of the body cables, measuring around 7.5" in length. That's a whole lot of hours of my life there, folks. Some of the back rows only take 15 or so minutes, but row 5 with all it's crosses can take as long as 50 minutes. That's for one measly row.

Of course, there are 262 stitches in a row, so maybe "measly" isn't the word we want to use here.

At my current rate of knitting, this sweater will take around 9 months to complete. I'm hoping to pick up the pace now that I have the pattern more or less memorized -- I still have to check the charts sometimes, especially for Chart C which is the saxon-braid-ish thing in the center and which is the hardest to work with it's three-over-one crosses. For the other charts, I can usually just look at the rows below and know what I'm supposed to do.

Chart C is the troublemaker in other ways, too. Last week, I noticed I had moved a column of stitches in the wrong direction and couldn't work the next cable cross. So I decided to ladder down that column -- it was only two rows -- and reknit just those stitches. This is a fix I've worked on other patterns with some anxiety but little real difficulty. It just takes time and courage.

Except for in this case.

I laddered down and knit back up, and things looked a bit too loose on the needles. So I counted my stitches and realized I was short a purl. Hmm. Checked the back of the work, and there was my lonely little dropped purl, now about three rows lower than the point of the original miscross. Working with that section had caused it to run a little.

So, not being a quitter, I laddered down again (further this time) and reknit the column a second time.

At which point, I realized I had somehow managed to drop two other stitches, a different purl plus a knit.

After much bad language, I called it quits on this particular fix and placed the two dropped stitches on safety pins so they wouldn't run. Then I tinked back, stitch by painstaking stitch, to the point where I could pick up the safety pinned stitches. Then I reknit all those rows.

Tinking and reknitting those rows took four hours. I watched "The Godfather" on A&E, with commercials, while reknitting those rows. That doesn't include the time I spent on the original "fix" a/k/a mess.

All of which is to say, Chart C is not currently my bff.