Icarus Update

And we've moved! We are now settling into our new house and are happily procrastinating unpacking all of the boxes. And we have had internet at the new place for about an hour and a half now. But this is not the point of the post.

This is an update on the Icarus that I am so trying to complete (less than two weeks!) for the wedding. I had previously thought that it wasn't going to be big enough and decided to add an extra repeat of Chart1 before doing the partial chart and diving into chart2. While I was working on the partial repeat AFTER completing the extra repeat of the chart, I decided that no, this was now going to be an Icarus blanket, not an Icarus shawl. And we don't want that. During the move, I managed to hurt my hips to the point where I could NOT remove myself from the couch without shrieking in agony (no lie) so I spent most of my time working on the shawl/blanket. It was during this time that I decided to rip back the 14 rows needed to undo the extra mess that I had created for myself.

Ripping lace is not entirely straight forward. If this was anything else, I would have slid the stitches off and started pulling, confident in my abilities to sort it out in a timely manner. The size lace weight yarn I am using and the Yo's next to ssk's and k2tog's made it so that I really didn't want to just rip and hope. Of course, being the cocky knitter I am, I had no lifeline. So what am I to do?

After doing one row, I decided that tinking was going to take waaay too long, and seeing as how I have a fast approaching deadline this was almost certainly not an option. I tried about 10 times to thread an afterthought lifeline, but alas the YO's, ssk's, and k2togs made it almost impossible to see if I was picking the right stitches. Solution? I decided that tinking back every 5 stitches out of 12 was better than tinking all those 12, so I thread a lifeline through the 7 plain knit stitches and skipped the pattern part. I dropped the knits and tinked back on the pattern, making sure not to drop anything vital. This ended up being much faster and successful than my alternative, and had I known in which box or bag the camera was in, I would have taken pictures of the before and after shots.

I am happy with the decision since I know the size will be what I want, but the only thing that makes me sad is the time that I spent doing all those extra rows and then having to undo them. I could have been getting it right the first time! Oh well. I am now almost finished with Chart2 (only 2 more rows left!) and will soon be moving on to Charts 3 and 4. I'm estimating that even if I power through I'll still be cutting it close and may finish May 30th. Today is the 20th after all... I only have 10 days left to work on it before having to wear it on the 11th day.