Things don't always go as planned - or as instructed. You miss an increase, tink back to where you were supposed to do it, and continue. You notice that the item is too big or too small and you have to unravel half of what you have knitted so far. Or you simply realize that it's not going to work out, the item is horrible and you will never wear it so better frog the whole thing.

For me unraveling is a way of working. I do make swatches and even try to do the math beforehand, but let's admit it: I'm too lazy to look at my own calculations and just keep knitting when I'm in the flow, hoping that it will be all good. Knowing that most likely it won't be. Even if I'm following a pattern, I usually keep myself too occupied with reading something, attending a seminar or whatever, so picking up the instructions is simply too much to ask for and there I knit, hoping that it will be all good.

Last weekend I noticed that I have four projects waiting for unraveling and attention to detail. One of them was a simple case of not reading the instructions (or, technically speaking, the instructions said "see below for right number of increases" and then the numbers were _above_ on the next column, so it wasn't really my fault, was it?), not paying attention to obviously wrong size (I mean, if you see that the sleeve is too small, then why knit another one the same size and continue with the yoke until you run out of yarn before admitting that you need to buy more yarn and make the sleeves wider?) and then two cases of prototyping.



Prototyping. That's the way I design my patterns. There's only so much you can calculate, but then you will also need to see how the cables look like with the neckline shaping and you can't really calculate that. Or how the neckline works with the edging. For me, ripping something and starting all over again isn't a failure, it's part of the process.


Then again, plenty of the rework is simply a result of not concentrating on one thing at a time.