Inspiration
Your Brilliant Mistake
What a difference a week makes!
Thanks to airplane rides to and from Chicago and a satisfying 15-episode binge of The Pitt, I not only recovered a week’s worth of ripped-back raglan rounds on my Waffle Pullover, but I’m now officially so far into the body that I’m at the “I don’t want this book to end” stage. Nearly ready for the ribbing at the hem!
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I’m very happy that I ripped back.
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The line of make-1-left increases on that one wobbly, waffly raglan is still not perfect, but it’s a respectable journeyman effort and it’s no longer worrying me at all. Sometimes something will block right out!
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This beautiful “seam” line at the beginning of the round gives me joy.
Reading the comments on my last post reminded me that making mistakes is as vital to knitting as knitting is itself. All knitters have these high-wire moments and dark nights of the soul. Far from being something to be ashamed of, mistakes should be celebrated.
Tales of knitting gone wrong, and made right, are the knitterly equivalent of the courtroom war stories of my past. As the small and large disasters of my trial career accumulated, I started to actually look forward to going back to the office and regaling my mates with the story of a really good, really bad day. To the victor goes the spoils, but to the person whose line of cross-examination was not allowed goes the story. It’s never just about the mistake; it’s about the way out of the mistake, or through the mistake, or around the mistake. If you’re tired of mistakes, you’re tired of life.
Which brings me to my question for you: what was your biggest knitting mistake? Tell us the tale, and be the hero of the hour.
The first sweater I knit was for my father. I was maybe twelve and only had learned the knit and purl stitches. I had a pattern but had no one to show me how to actually do what the pattern requested so I made guesses and it was a knitted covering of trial and error, ripping back, and rethinking what could that possibly mean. I followed exactly the number of rows stated which worked out okay until the sleevelength. When my father put it on the sleeves were waaaaay tooooo long. I learned several things: a swatch was a pretty good idea; to actually look at and think about what I was doing; and how much my father loved me by wearing that sweater every time he watched his favorite football team play on the television with the sleeves folded over and over.
My worst was*also* sweater sleeves. I was in the baby, stained in the tropics, and planning to go to graduate school in the Rocky mountains. So I decided to knit a gray turtleneck to be ready for the cold weather. It was knitted in pieces, with set in sleeves. One of the sleeves I knitted to be way too long, and one of the guys in the shop I worked at picked it up, put it on his nose and played being an elephant for the entire day. There were so many other mistakes and bad sizing and bad gauge problems with that sweater, I hope the person who eventually bought it at the Goodwill ripped it out and reused the yarn.
there are some days when i wonder if my biggest ever knitting mistake was ever starting to knit in the first place!
so there was the the sock where i did the gusset the wrong way – in the stitches that had been left aside while i knitted a heel flap rather than the heel flap stiches.
there have been at least 2 baby cardigans where i knitted 2 left fronts (or it might have been 2 right fronts, you get the idea),
the time i knitted a pair of gloves with fingers and knitted right hand fingers onto the left hand glove and was 3 fingers in before i noticed.
the pair of cowls in a wool that turned out to be too scratchy to go round someone’s neck ( they are still waiting to be frogged/given away/put on the compost pile!)
let’s not mention mis crossed cables, uneven tension on a 2 colour project (and no, blocking didn’t help).
but the worst thing i ever did to a piece of knitting was when i accidentally bundled a Shetland lace shawl that my sister knitted for my first baby into the washing machine with a load of Babygros and vests from baby #3 and put it on a 40 degree C (100 F) full wash. the shawl was originally about 5ft (1.5 m) square , it came out the machine about 12 inches(30 cm) square. 40 years later i still cry to think about it. (and yes, i did confess to my sister who was very forgiving but never knitted another thing for my bairns in good quality wool!).
Oh I feel the pain of that felted shawl from here.
My worst mistake is still sitting in a basket (it is colorful and pretty) silently reminding me of it’s abuse at my hands.
It is the MDK suggested Kiki Mariko rug pattern. I had never steeked but it led me to believe I could. MDK promised if you could cut a atraight line, you could do it. Well….confidently I cut-only to realize the tube spiraled. Nope it wouldn’t unravel, felted as it was, but I cut outside of my steeked area as I went up. Now it has sat waiting for me to repair the sliced bits of rug.
Hey, it’s a rug. Maybe I should use it as is.
Someday I will steek again.
I definitely vote for using it as is. Those rugs feel great on bare feet and your feet won’t care about a little wonkiness!
I like knitting for loved ones, friends and babies, but once, in a moment of madness, I agreed to knit a jumper for an acquaintance. Anything you want, I blithely said. She presented me with a huge cone of pale beige 4ply….I knit this thing for possibly eons on tiny needles, and when it was finally done, it was filthy. So I washed it and hung it up to dry on a rack in front of a gas fire, which scorched it. I did manage to get the scorch out eventually and handed it over, with great relief. But this experience taught me that knitting has to have some love in it!
A semi experienced knitter at the time, i was totally taken by a Kaffe Fassett design for which I purchased a shiny Takhi cotton in five gorgeous colors. My intarsia improved as I progressed and about 7 inches into the body it looked good but the inside…well.
I took it to my lys for suggestions from Brigitte, owner and member of my knitting group, the pig knitters (pot luck and knitting, maybe more pigging at times than knitting). MEIN GOTT she screamed, as I had yet to learn about weaving ends in as you go with intarsia. Hundreds? Thousands? of shiny cotton ends.
Cut the remaining bobbins, salvaged the rest for a very cute sweater for a toddler, did not look at intarsia for another twenty plus years.
I used to work for an organization that called mistakes, “opportunities for growth” and my biggest mistake turned out to be just that. It was Andrea Mowry’s “Morning Rituals” sweater, the one with that lovely cabled ribbing, I had completed the bottom cabled ribbing and attached the pocket flaps before I realized one row of two different cables was reversed; I had cabled left instead of cabling right. I had already ripped back a number of rows for a previous mistake and did not want to do that again. So, to Youtube I went to see if it was possible to ladder down and fix the cables. It was and I did. It probably took as long as it would have if I’d just ripped back and began again, but then I wouldn’t have learned a new skill to add to my knitting tool box!
Once that beautiful sweater was finished and blocked, it was a little tighter and a couple of inches shorter than I really wanted it to be. I tried wearing it a few times and did not like the fit at all. I ended up ripping out and re-knitting the entire sweater only this time, I used the lessons and skills I had learned from the first knitting. I got the perfect fit, all cables oriented correctly and a sweater that I love and will wear for many years to come.
I love that sweater too… what I learned from it is to check length measurements. I’ve seen Andrea once in Person (at a yarn show) and she isn’t much shorter than I am, maybe two inches? but OMG… I knit my sweater 6 INCHES longer, and it still didn’t cover as much of my behind as hers did! Thankfully I had enough yarn…. I knit another one, added another inch and it’s better. Just love it–those are my winter go-to-snuggly sweaters.
I had the same sort of problem in a cabled throw and am so happy that I learned to drop down a whole panel of stitches and make the correction. (there’s a photo on my Ravelry page.) It made me a much braver, more adventurous knitter.
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I get a lovely cardigan with horizontal Chevron stripes. I didn’t use the exact same repeat of the different colors for the stripes. When I did the sleeves, I started with the wrong color. I knit two sleeves at a time, so they’ll come out the same. It wasn’t until I had completely finished both sleeves that I realized that the stripes were off by one color. So I knitted two more sleeves. I now call it “the sweater with four sleeves.”
It took me 3 attempts to get the yoke of the daytripper cardigan correct. It was my first stranded knitting attempt but really what the Hell! also the first 2 times I had knitted way into the body before realizing Hmmmm something is not right here!
I was knitting a bear – no sewn on appendages-all one piece, was part of a KAL. But my dad was dying I missed some classes. Terribly detailed pattern. I set her aside for some more meditative lessons demanding knitting. But when I picked her up somehow I would end up with the outside instead of the knits. Rip out – back in time out she went and she stayed there – quietly waiting. We moved states. Then a grand baby was coming – she came out from the stash bin. She went to my LYS knitting group – someone observed me and realized I was holding/looking at my knitting wrong hence the reversed stitches. My biggest mistake was not seeking out in person help you don’t always have to figure it out on your own – sometimes you need a human lifeline.
Your final sentence says it all. Isn’t that true of so much of life? We all stumble through, doing the best we can, but the journey is so much more pleasant when we just support each other.
Many years ago, when I was around 20 years old, I knit a pair of Scandinavian colorwork mittens. Only after completing the second mitten did I realize I had knit two right mittens. I had knit the recipient’s name in cuff so I didn’t want to knit two left mittens to make two pair. Instead, I had a tantrum.
Your mitts brought back memories! I was knitting a pair of lace mitts w/just lace on the back & finger holes but not the whole fingers. That little lace panel gave me fits but I finally got it done & moved on to it’s mate that went much smoother except after I finished it I realized I’d knit 2 lefts (or 2 rights). Had enough to make 2 more so ended up with 2 pairs, gifted 1 to a friend. There have been other “challenges” but luckily I have no problem ripping out & starting over if I know I can’t live with something.
I did the same thing just over a year ago and I had been knitting over 50 years. I think the charts confused me and discovered the mistake almost at the end.
I love that you had to go back that far Wendy 😉
I mean that’s almost 10 years ago!
There was the early cardigan sweater that ended up with two right fronts (frogged and not reknit), the cotton sweater for DH that stood up by itself (gauge swatch, what gauge swatch?); and then there is the WIP sweater currently in ‘time out’ due to making the second sleeve decreases in a totally different sequence from the first sleeve decreases, leading to one fat arm and one thin arm (second sleeve frogged).
Errors due to: 1) novice knitting first cardigan, 2) no gauge swatch made, and 3) distracted knitting while watching movies on my iPad.
Have I learned from these? You betcha’!
I will share my mothers story because it is so much better than mine. My parents met in college. After a year or so of dating my mom decided to knit him a sweater vest which was all the rage back in the 30’s.When it came to the shoulders she did the decreases that created the slope of the shoulder in the wrong direction creating little wings that pointed upward. She gave it to him anyway. Dad was a quiet man, and didn’t want to hurt her feelings so he asked another woman to remove the shoulder pads from his sport coat, folded over the “wings” of the sweater vest to take the place of the shoulder pads, and wore the jacket over the sweater. It was more than a year before she knew about this and by then they were planning their future together. They were married for 62 years
I made a Stephen West Shawl that had a 450 stitch brioche section right in the middle. I finished the whole row and realized it was ALL wonky. Spent a day and a half tinking that back. Now, however, I am very proud of that shawl and wear it often. It was worth the cursing and the work!
I make a mistake in everything I knit. Sometimes I fix, sometimes I don’t. If you want perfect go to Kohl’s and buy a mass produced sweater.
Knitting mistakes? I’ve had a few. But my latest big “mistake” can be chalked up to lack of a proper swatch. Oh, I did swatch, after a fashion. But I didn’t wash and block the swatch.
So I knit a whole vest out of no-longer-available Colinette wigwam (a beautiful cotton tape yarn) that I dug out of deep stash. After washing and a tumble in the dryer, it was too short and too tight, and the fabric was too dense. So — yes — I unraveled the whole thing and reknit it at a larger gauge. Much better!
I guess, to look at the bright side, I got double the knitting out of one project.
My biggest, scariest mistake happened yesterday when I left my knitting basket that was.holding my Sabai Top in progress on the floor. I left home to teach a class and while I was gone my iRobot vacuum cleaner tipped my basket and ate my knitting, needles, yarn, cables and all! Disaster!! It took careful untangling, some yarn snipping but after what seemed hours of anxious maneuvering, I freed my project mostly unscathed. Note to self – be present, be mindful and be patient and grateful
I don’t have any knitting mistakes. I have design features!
I have to start this with the caveat that this had nothing to do with the pattern. It’s a great pattern and very fun and easy to make. 10 out of 10. Two thumbs up!
It was my first Shakerag Skirt. I had just gotten my measurements done at Vogue Knitting and was quite pleased with myself. I double checked before I started it and I was spot on. I went ahead and measured a skirt that I really liked (I call it the Kay Rule) and it was much smaller than my measurement (of my actual body) but I blamed that on it 1. not being knit and 2. being old. I cast on for the size that fit my measurement.
My gauge was perfect and I knit the whole damn thing. And it was enormous!! Like circus tent huge. Like I could do that scene in The Nutcracker where all the kids run out from under the skirt. I reknit the whole thing following the Kay Rule and it is a dream. I wear it all the time and get loads of compliments on it.
Lessons learned:
1. My body is an enigma from the neck down (the same thing happened with a sweater a year later.)
2. Do what Kay tells you to do.
I’m sometimes wrong but never in doubt!
I literally just finished the Shakerag Skirt this weekend and it’s only waiting for me to sew the two ends of the elastic together! I made sure I re-read Kay’s blog before I knitted it just to make sure I got the benefit of her experience. Mine turned out perfect and I have her to thank.
I only wish someone would design a matching top!
So many mistakes, I make them all the time!
My biggest mistake is not fixing a mistake when first discovered and deluding myself that it will not be noticeable in the finished product. Nope. Mistakes flash in the finished products like a neon sign in Los Vegas. My biggest mistake was it took me about 3 or 4 times to learn that valuable lesson. When not taking the time to redo, it inevitably results in an item that will seldom, if ever, be worn. Memory of those items has given me the grit to stop and assess then tink, ribbit, or begin again when something is not right.
Mistakes are my middle name. Just commenting because I like these 2 sentences:
It’s never just about the mistake; it’s about the way out of the mistake, or through the mistake, or around the mistake. If you’re tired of mistakes, you’re tired of life.
Thanks for this.
Yes ! Knitting and philosophy
Oh, my biggest knitting mistake resulted in a gorgeous sweater that was unwearable.
I substituted a heavy worsted yarn for a light worsted and didn’t knit a test swatch. When I finally held up my sweater, it reached almost to my knees. I frogged a bunch, knitted the waistband, then the sleeves. It was beautiful, if still on the large size; but the biggest problem was it was just too warm. I couldn’t wear it inside, and if I wore it outside, I couldn’t do anything because I’d immediately start to sweat because it was so heavy.
But it was beautiful so occasionally I would put it on and just stand outside in the cold.
I finally gave it away. I couldn’t bear to rip it out and make something else. And since then, I almost always swatch.
The Shakerag Top. Got gauge with larger needle … but realized half way through knitting the body that I did NOT “change to larger needle and begin stripe sequence”! I kept going, despite struggling with carrying the yarn up when working with one strand (holes and ladders in fabric), the mattress stitch shoulder join, and the armhole edging (hole at the armpit). So many times I thought about unraveling and starting at the beginning… yet I kept going. Yesterday I tried on the unblocked top (lacking one finished armhole edging) and it fits! I will wear my mistake 🙂
I was teaching myself lace. Back in the days of written patterns, no charts. I’d knit a round or two, lay it out, then carefully rip it back, pick up the stitches and do it again. Stitch markers were just coming into vogue and they saved that shawl from back of the closet oblivion. I still have that shawl, mistakes I didn’t catch and all. I’m about to learn beaded embroidery on knitting, so maybe I’ll add some “design elements”. Making my shawl even more spectacular!
Too many niggly little mistakes to remember, I’m afraid, but a big one is knitting with the wrong YARN. That is a whole project’s worth of mistakes. OR ripping out a perfectly fitting little shrug (thinking it was a bit too short) and having the next TWO tries at it be just too-loose enough to lose all that je ne sais quoi-ness that I had knit into it the first darn time. That one still pains me beyond all reason. I’ll bet your “journeyman’s” raglan line gives you a glow right now and hopefully will do more so once it is bathed and blocked.
Well on my way to finishing a size extra-large version of the Elizabeth Zimmerman Adult Surprise Sweater, I came up some dozens of stitches short of the required number for the next section. Had to rip back over a foot of knitting, including all the directional increases and decreases, until I reached a stretch at which my count and the pattern count matched.
Did I mention that I was using up odd bits of yarn from my stash by changing colors every two rows?
My knit-mates & I decided we were going to learn how to knit socks. We went with worsted weight yarn for our socks. I got to the heel flap part & didn’t realize that I was supposed to purl back all the stitches after the k1 sl1 part. I slipped those stitches all the way up the heel on both sides. I’m surprised the yarn didn’t snap on me.
Sigh – it’s hard for me to pick just one, so I’ll go with one of my most recent. I am not “knitting monogamous”, and one of my multitude of ongoing projects is always the “late at night, don’t need to pay attention” project. This one was an adorable t-shirt, with a wool/silk slub yarn that created its own interest, and once I was past the lacy hem, it was mere stockinette around forever and ever. I even took care to get the correct gauge before starting. When I was at the neck bind-off, I finally climbed out of bed to hold it up to myself in the mirror. Or should I say “myselves”? Because despite all the things I got right, I somehow managed to choose the pattern directions in the wrong set of parentheses, and my almost finished t-shirt was over 72” around. Although, the next morning, several friends offered to get in there with me, thanks to frequent encouragement found here, I ripped ‘er out and started again LOL
If you knit as much as I do, and for as long as I have, you are gonna make some clunkers. My biggest mistake is feeling that something isn’t right, and forging ahead anyway. I’ve made sweaters with sleeves, even though at the same gauge, etc, that just don’t match, socks with two heels because you aren’t thinking. The one I’m working on now is a very unusual sweater done in a very different format. I knew it wasn’t right, even though I followed the directions exactly. The instructions are very, ahem, loose. But I went ahead and followed the directions. It’s a million short rows. So when I can bear it, I’m going to have to go in, rip out all of those lovely short rows, and figure out how it should really go.
We can all learn from mistakes. Sometimes, as in knitting, you have to put it down, breathe, think, and come back to it with courage.
I loved the Daytripper Cardigan; I had done a fair bit of stranded color work and enjoyed it. I used the suggested yarn but decided to change the colors. What could go wrong? I spent literally hours with graph paper, little drawings of cardigans and colored pencils, pens, and crayons to get the perfect colors.
As I knit I liked the background color, and figured the yoke colors would work when I got them all done. I got well past the yoke and realized I hated the contrasting colors. I debated not frogging but I knew I would never wear it. So I frogged the whole thing, chose new colors on the fly, and loved it. From that experience I learned that frogging is almost always worth it. Almost.
It was a pullover pattern called Squirrel Monkey. And I admit no liability here!
It’s not my fault I decided to alter the pattern to knit it in the round instead of flat. I admit no wrongdoing in deciding to add waist shaping to this fussy allover cables & lace pattern. What could possibly go wrong?
(Did I mention this beast was worked on fingering weight yarn and each round was somewhere north of 250 stitches?)
And I’m certainly not responsible for the Laws of Mathematics that declare that an itsy-bitsy half stitch per inch difference in gauge would mean that the stitch count for a 48″ chest measurement would result, instead, in a 52″ chest measurement. Amiright?
So the entire reason Squirrel Monkey became Rabid Squirrel in my personal vocabulary had to do with a itsy-bitsy error in stitch count when placing the side seam markers, so that by the time I got to shoulder bind-off, it was obvious that the stitch counts between right and left sides was off by a teeny bit. Like … 30 stitches? And by this time I was so sick of the whole already-knit-it-twice project (did I mention it’s made in filtering weight yarn?) that I just started madly decreasing stitches on the too-wide side until the $*&%$** thing worked.
SO THERE. I AM THE BOSS OF MY KNITTING.
And then I tried it on. And discovered I had one armhole on the true side seam and one armhole in the center of my chest.
It was at this point that Squirrel Monkey irrevocably became Rabid Squirrel in my personal lexicon.
And yes, I did rip it back to the underarm split and reworked the upper torso. But did I mention the part about FINGERING WEIGHT yarn?
“Rabid squirrel” … hahahahahaha!
OMG … I have two (different) squirrel sweaters. The first I designed myself and the only written part of the pattern was the charted squirrel colorwork. It even had acorn buttons. I hated the collar when I finished. So I wore it once and then it sat for maybe two years. Or four? I don’t know. I finally ripped out the collar this year and did a little stand-up one. I don’t love it, but it’s better and I wear it now.
The second one I haven’t gotten past the neck because the increases are incorrect and I’m afraid of pattern errors to come.
Back in the day I bought A brand new knitting book Log Cabin Knitting. I picked soft cotton-wool blue yarn for my first grandsons baby blanket. This should be easy I thought and cast on! Back and forth I knit,. After a while I noticed my blanket was curling in on itself. Not to be deterred I knit on and on, it was starting to look like A cocoon. It will be ok I told myself over and over. It will be A beautiful design element!
Eventually I realized I would be frogging the entire thing. I ripped strip after strip and placed it in a plastic bag to be done at a calmer time. 25 years later it is still in the plastic bag hidden in the closet of shame.
I learned to knit as a child. I would knit the straight part of socks after my mother cast on, she’d turn the heel, and I would knit the foot until the decreases. Of course, I completely forgot how to knit for decades, until a friend wanted to take a class and talked me into going with. I wanted to knit sweaters and socks, which was my push for learning.
My first pair of socks was so large they wouldn’t fit anyone in our home. My eldest took them and uses them as bed socks in the winter. The second pair was a little smaller, but still much too large. I have learned a lot about knitting socks since then, and my kids & DH proudly wear any socks I knit for them, because they are sized perfectly for whoever I’m making them for. So, yes, brilliant mistakes happen!
My first sweater in college – made for my boyfriend, now husband. Swatch? Never heard the term back then. It was so LARGE! He was thin back then. Wish I’d had the foresight to keep it. May have fit now!
Mistakes, misreads of patterns, dropped stitches. They are a part of my knitting life. Probably why I have multiple WIP so I can walk away from one and go to another until I am ready to work on the first one.
My biggest “mistake” was not really looking at the pattern picture carefully before knitting. I had just found a group getting together at a yarn store not too far from my home. I had a pattern, bought the yarn at the store, and was ready to join a group to enjoy the company of knitters. My first cardigan – Hannah Fettig’s Effortless Cardigan. I don’t remember if I did a swatch – not that it would have mattered with the pattern. I finished the sweater and tried it on. the body of the sweater fit perfectly, BUT. The sweater dips and hangs down in the front creating the ability to wrap it around. I found I could wrap it around multiple times – not the sweater for a larger body. I showed it to the group, and told them I was going home and taking it apart. The comments to try to stop that action were funny. I did go home that night. And I did totally take it apart. And I knit another cardigan from the yarn that I still love and wear 15-20 years later.
Should have read all the other Comments First, then I might have added this comment about fit. I think fitting is an Art. Part measurement, part eyeballing, part experience, part try-on-as-you-go. I once substituted as a seller in the lingerie department. When an older woman came in asking for bra-fitting help, I turned to an experienced salesperson for help. She measured this lady and concluded that she was an ” XYZ” size. Well this sweet lady, thanks to extremely clever surgery, had the face of a 20 year old but the body of a 90 year old. I dutifully picked out a couple of bras in XYZ and they were twice her size. We conferred and guessed a much closer to reality size. Here, a little eyeballing Plus a true knowledge of her age – she had much less muscle mass than her measurement implied – would have been a better way to go. So I now tend to think of measurements as just a starting point. (And hopefully I can still apply the Kay rule for my own garments. It has mostly served me well.)
“If you’re tired of mistakes, you’re tired of life.”
That’s going in my journal! Many thanks
My most recent whopper was in the raglans of a top-down sweater. It wasn’t until I was at the sleeve/body separation that I realized I had the beginnings of a giant purple poncho! I ripped it all back, all of it, and the yarn is now sitting in balls in its basket in time out thinking about what it did wrong. When it’s ready to say it’s sorry, I will let it try to become a sweater again.
I am a fairly new knitter, having taken it up happily about three years ago. After stumbling through some fairly simple sweaters, socks and a shawl, I thought it is time to try a complex stitch pattern item. I have been working on the Lavinia Vest by Georgia Fibers which prints out at over 35 pages! (Turns out that each size has its own charts and they are not easy for the far-sighted as well :)) Cables are new for me and I just loved making them! Trouble was that I, at first, made the assumption that the seed stitch continued from the back to the front and so made my cables with seed stitch! I thought I had miscounted the stitches the first time I knit the right front piece so frogged it back after 30 rows, then proceeded to do it again, had to pull the stitches out again and, finally read the pattern! Ah Ha! No seed stitch! Simple knit and purl! Third time a charm!! Such a great feeling when it finally looked right. As I learned in art school long ago, it’s the Process that matters, not the Product!! Thank you for sharing you story, Amy. 🙂
Most recent almost disaster was in making Courtney Kelley’s Tallulah Shrug. Figured out the provisional cast-on using scrap yarn. But didn’t use stitch markers to note pattern repeats as I cast on. Somehow that first attempt went wonky after a few rows and I started over again. Then I tried to fix a missing stitch in the lace pattern, but things fell apart and I started over again from casting on. Went merrily along but after about 3 inches of rows, I realized that my stitch gauge was turning out too narrow. Had to go up 2 needle sizes.
Ripped out and then had the idea (maybe it was from an MDK post??) to use a cable needle for the provisional cast on instead of yarn—then I’d be ready to go in the opposite direction. Knitted and purled a while, but for some reason the stitches were falling apart when I was purling yarn overs. Could not figure it out, tried purling with a twist, lace pattern was not working. Went to basic knitting book and realized that, somehow, between the third and fourth attempt, my brain had decided to loop the yarn around the needles the wrong way for the yarn overs. Dunno how that brain fade happened in a matter of hours.
Fifth time was a charm. Let me tell you, I had that provisional cast on down pat, cable needle worked, yarn overs worked, and I finally finished the shrug in time to be mailed off for a Mother’s Day gift!!
Not only did perseverance pay off, but I can also attest to the value of swatching. I deliberately knit the shrug longer than the pattern called for, and I used every inch of that swatch when I was running out of yarn during the bind off.
(Has the USPS delivered it on time as promised for the Priority Mail fee? No. She’s still waiting.)
Oh no! We had an encounter with a failure of the mail system last night where a citizen was charged a late fee on her taxes because her certified envelope didn’t make it on time. I hope your mother’s shrug gets to her soon!
Oy, how to choose amongst so many! The very first sweater that I attempted was a gorgeous heather green beauty full of bobbles and cables. I knit the back. I knit one side of the front. I put it down for several years (of course). I picked it back up and knit the other side. Then I compared the sides. Reader, can you guess? One was twice the size of the other.
I still have those pieces someplace, kind of like a momento erratum.
Kindly send to me the patterns
I try to think of mistakes as opportunities to learn something, but boy did I make a big one last year. My daughter asked me to knit a wedding shawl for her. (A Walk Through Aspens)It was heavily cabled, made in a yarn marketed for babies, labeled machine washable. We hoped to wrap it around a future grandchild. I finished it 2 months before the wedding. Decided to wash on the delicate cycle for 10 minutes then air dry. When I checked it, it had felted so badly, the cables were invisible.
Soooo, I ordered the same shade in a superwash yarn, and started over. Finished shawl #2 in one month. It looked fabulous! Will be wrapping it around our new granddaughter!
I think my most memorable mistake was my Turnstile Wrap (from FG 24 Spark) I knit the entire wrap, and then when I was ready to sew the sleeves, I realized that
the sleeves were wrong, I had one on the top of the fabric and one on the bottom…I ripped it all out and re-knit the entire project. I STILL have not sewn the sleeves because I’m a little fearful that there’s still something wrong with it, so it sits in time out (a very LONG time out…about 18 months!!!) I should probably just look at it and try to figure it all out. I was so excited about this project and the gorgeous yarn!!!! I really try to embrace mistakes, and have lost all my fear of frogging everything if it’s not right!!!!
I was knitting the sweater with the wheat stalks around the yoke. After ripping it out twice I realized my stitch count was not at all close to what it was supposed to be. I finally took it out to the neck ribbing, put it aside and started to work on something else. I’m hoping that if I go back to it later, maybe I will be able to come out with the sweater that I am hoping for.
I have been laughing to the point of tears reading the comments! I don’t think my tale will add to the merriment, but here it is.
When I was in my 20s I lived in Basel and then in Munich for a few years and I had learned to knit again. I had a boyfriend in Munich so, of course, I decided to knit him a sweater. German knit shops were plentiful and filled with beautiful yarns. There were multiple magazines devoted to patterns. I selected a one full of cables and diamonds filled with seed stitch. Swatching? Maybe…
I knit the whole thing and went to assemble it and when he tried it on it was very large, even by 1980s standards. Rather than undo all of that knitting. I took to sewing on seam tape and the cutting down the extremely wide sleeves. I can’t remember if he ever wore it or not. The sleeves were quite stiff from my feeble (-minded) repair efforts so it could never have been pleasant to wear! But I still have some of the lovely yellow wool/mohair yarn even though I left the boyfriend behind when I left Germany a year or so later.
A few years later I was in Moscow for a semester and decided to knit my then-fiancé, now husband, a sweater. This one involved some color work, a new skill for me – I like knitting that expands my skills! 30+ years later, the unfinished sweater is still in a bin. He will still ask about it from time to time!
My most memorable mistake was such a learning experience. (*Stop me if I have told you the story before…) Fell in love with a pattern designed to be knit with Rowan cotton yarn, featuring a giant peony or cabbage rose and a generous turtleneck – designed for Kate Moss or some other leggy model; not for my frame (5′ 1”) or my mother’s (even shorter). I blindly and blithely substituted my local Northern Ontario yarn store’s cottons to save money; I learned quickly that the shades and colourfastness were just not the same. The generous fit and the cowl neck in cotton made for a very loose, baggy sweater; my mother stepped up and paid for the Rowan yarns (subtle, smooth, nothing like ’em) to make the colourwork less garish. I ended up wearing the sweater more than my mom and I would give anything to have both with me today ! And that was one of my first life lessons through knitting, I believe I get at least two per year ! bises,
Where to start? In the present:
raglans on my Waffle Pullover that I am leaving messy-ish (could not commit which color yarn to pull up for M1 iykyk)
A few years ago: a Ranunculus with 5 raglans ,somehow I didn’t notice I was adding an arm in the middle of the back until way further along than you’re imagining. Abandoned!
Way back : in my 20s I had very long full curly dark hair that I always wore down. I was knitting a bottom up pullover completely covered in horseshoe cables . When I got to the top of the back I was tired of doing cables so I decided to skip crossing them in the last repeat which sits below my shoulders in back because it would *always* be hidden by my hair,surely I would never have shorter hair or wear it up or HA! have it turn silver and less full.
Predictably this sweater has worn like iron and is still in my possession in all its perfect imperfection to remind me that you just never know.
I made an Icelandic-style stranded sweater for a grandson who lives on the other side of the Atlantic. By the time he came to visit, he’d had a growth spurt and looked like a sausage in it. It had been a bottom-up pattern, so rather than taking the whole thing apart and rewinding the yard to redo it, I just started unraveling from the neck and reknitting the new one directly from the top down, adding extra yarn strategically to make it bigger. Seemed to save a bit of time and trouble, and I could always tell which colors went where.
Hi Kay
No story of my biggest knitting mistake here. However, your posts remind me of when I’m sewing. Sometimes I will look at a line of topstitching and exclaim it is terrible …..then rip it out. These days, I reserve judgement until more of the garment is finished. There’s bound to be even bigger issues before I finish! Often when I wear the garment later, I never notice “the glaring error”. Having said all this, I do frog my knitting.I am a perfectionist and was taught that’s when we learn….Great job on your sweater!
I have been knitting for 50 years. I am not a beginner, although I do tend to choose patterns that are easier because they are more meditative. I am about to begin my 5th Sophie scarf in my continuing attempt to make a Sophie without a single mistake. It is a simple scarf–possibly the Ravelry pattern with the most projects. The problem is the built-in i-cord edge. If you make a mistake and have to rip out a few rows, it is very tricky to get the three stitches that comprise the i-cord back in the same order. It you do not get them back in the right order, the border is twisted. It is not intuitive. It is also difficult to figure out where you are in the pattern unless you have learned to use a removable stitch marker at the end of EVERY last row of the pattern and leave them in until you are finished. I had such a hard time figuring out how to rip back and not end up with a mess. I totally ripped out a half-finished Sophie because I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how to restore the stitches. The last one I made (#4) is as close to perfect as I have done. There are no twisted i-cord edges, but there is one woven-in end that peskily sticks out.
YES! That icord edge on the Sophie Scarf is so lovely but make an error and rip back and how do you get the icord stitches back in the right order?? I had to fix mine several times but each time I had to reinvent the process by trial and error, couldn’t remember how I’d done it the last time.
Most heart breaking mistake: an amazing child sweater with a row of Tyranosaurus Rex around the yoke. The pattern didn’t give an on-going stitch count and one row of missed increases at the neck meant one less dinosaur and the yoke looked like a cone. My friend suggested I yarn bomb a fire hydrant!
I knit a sweater for DH in 2006 because he was having a big scary surgery, and I needed something to do with my hands. I did a tiny swatch, which lied to me, of course. When the sweater was done, it was enormous! I could have put two of him in it. I wore it as a slanket while watching TV.
In 2007 there was another big scary (scarier) surgery. Was it my fault because I had botched the sweater? Only one way to find out.
I removed the buttons, picked out the seams, frogged the entire sweater, cast on again. Perfect. And the surgery was successful, too.
He’s wearing that sweater right now. Whew!
Socks, 12-1/2 Wide Mens: I tried using a thinner guage yarn than I had ever worked with before and without a sock pattern for this guage. Armed with fresh foot/ankle/leg measurements and a guage swatch I started knitting the first sock top down with ribbing. The foot is great but he can’t get the ribbing above the heel flap on or off easily. Not sure how to dismantle them without ripping out from the toe and starting all over again! They are in time-out. To go back to familiar guage sock yarn, or try this yarn again?
Now you’ve got that Elvis Costello song in my head!
Back when I really couldn’t afford it, I splurged on yarn for a large lace shawl – for once, in exactly the yarn, the pattern, and the color I’d seen at Webs on a pilgrimage. Finished it and immediately tossed it in the washer based on a brain fart that COLD water wouldn’t felt yarn. Et voilà, felted felt feltity felt felt felt! I could have chopped it into a series of oven hot pads, had I been able to bear the sight of the thing. Luckily, a friend found it to be a charming thick scarf and promised to never wear it in my presence or mention its existence ever again.
Before I understood the concept of gauge, I tried to knit myself a long Aran cardigan. Unfortunately, I knit myself an Aran bathrobe……..now I know 2 things;
1. GAUGE!!!!!
2. If it looks wrong, stop and rethink. Don’t keep knitting forever!
Lessons well used in the following 50 plus years of knitting.
Sometimes getting a project started can be tricky – a few I had to start over enough times that I referred to it as “knitting in place.”
Your last two sentences are so true!
It happened just 2 weeks ago with my current wip – also a raglan pullover. I finished the moss-stitch body, all the way to casting off the ribbed hem, when I noticed that waaaay up, the first row of moss stitch after I separated off the sleeves, was a repeat of the row just above it. After two days of trying to gaslight myself into believing no one would notice, I ripped off the band-aid — I undid the bind-off row, hooked the yarn to my yarn winder, and frogged all the way back to the armpits. It hurt then, but now as I’m about to finish the body again, I can’t help but admire how much better I think it looks the second time around!
Just last night, I was so excited to finish yet another Ball Band dishrag (thanks Kay for this fun, addictive rabbit hole of knitting!) that I forgot to bind off before snipping my yarn! Not a big deal, but, insert eye roll emoji!
I also realize after reading all the comments that I think my biggest mistake has been the fear of making a mistake, so that I won’t try something challenging or complicated. Unlike with knitting, it’s not often in life we’re given an opportunity to rip back and start over. Another plus for knitting! All the wonderful, full speed ahead stories compel me to correct that mistake and knit with (cautious) abandon!!
I’m not as tight a knitter as I used to be, but I’ve learned through repeated trial and error to make a gauge swatch, make it large, and block it! For decades I didn’t know about the block it part, or that super wash grows.
But I think the worst error was in 1978 when I was 20 years old and doing a semester in London. I bought a fine fingering weight yarn, a Sirdar book, a set of Milward “knitting pins” (which I still have and can’t bear to give up though unused for decades) and knit an all over lace cardigan, close fit with picot edges and a horizontal band of the lace at the waist. It was beautiful, and all things considered quite well done as I was truly a fairly beginner knitter. As I knit I kept thinking, gee this looks small (I sew so I had something of a clue). But I kept knitting, holding it up to myself and hoping all the pieces would come right. They didn’t. It was at least two sizes too small. I couldn’t bear to rip out months of work and it sat, pretty and unworn, in my closet for probably a few decades. Sigh.
Figuring out how a particular yarn will behave with the stated wearing ease, what looks good on me in terms of fit/ease, is still sometimes a struggle, but I have learned to rip it out when that warning voice starts hollering!
Yes! Like yours, mine is a raglan, but a cardigan. Not for me, much larger and a giant perseverance challenge in a very warm, very woolly, almost tweedy yarn. A cardigan on one long needle, and during the decreases three cords broke at the metal join, a record. So two needles to get to the neck as I’m out of long cords. Within sight of the neck, I looked down at my lap and thought, with dread and a sinking feeling, one front looks a lot wider than the other. Tracking back, I had 45 stitches on one side and 55 on the other. No possible fix. This yarn is on its second go already because I had continued to completion past all possible common sense with a different pattern. 2000 m of slow ripping back in a much lauded yarn that I have discovered I just don’t like, and now another kilometre! I welcomed a long car ride yesterday to get on with the stocking stitch! Your story has been encouraging.
My first project was a chunky weight cardigan. With the help of a great teacher, all went well until, (dun,dun,dun), it was time to add the 4” buttonband that ran allll the way around from hem to hem. I followed directions, k2, p2 with care added buttonholes perfectly, and tried it on, only to find the bottom of the bands up to my rib cage. I tried 2 more pick-up ratios, knit the band to somewhat better but still unsatisfactory results. I called the pattern publisher, not much help. I finally found an article that suggested hanging the bottom ribbing vertically, measuring the stretched gauge, and applying that gauge to the buttonband. It worked, more or less, and I decided to accept “good enough”. For my perfectionist self, that was a feat! But boy, did I learn a lot.
Accompanied by my siblings and mother, I bought yarn for my first sweater at a major yarn sale. I left with acrylic yarn — not wool, which I wanted — and a colorway that I disliked. The pullover came out fine, but I wore it just once before giving it away. Often it’s important to ignore advice
I once knit an Andrea Mowry sweater bottom uphaving twisted the stitches from the start. I discovered at the arm holes. I didn’t love the yarn so went to my LYS and they helped me rip. Oh and it was about 2 sizes too big. So… started over – new yarn , better fit. I always frog even with the smallest mistake as I know I wont be happy – hopefully the sooner the better
Re the Sophie Scarf (I’m a sucker for first-person knitting adventures in Comments so here I am again)) In hopes that this might help somebody, I also had trouble with reknitting the i-cord bind off And maintaining a consistent row count. I finally gave up and went with a Very occasional change in row count between increases/decreases. It turned out just fine! Such is the pattern and the stretchiness of knitting that it looked just fine even with my larger (worsted) gauge which would normally magnify any mistakes. I certainly wouldn’t recommend willy-nilly making up your own row count as you went along, but maybe two or three “mistakes” probably won’t hurt your scarf, might keep you from losing your sanity, and may even encourage you to making a second one now that you have the gist of the pattern. (I did use stretchy wool, not a plant or acrylic fiber, so check your progress visually as you go along,)
Edging, not bind-off. Duh!
I finished a sock while waiting for a flight – kitchener perfect, ends woven in, folded in thirds, patted with love, tucked in my project bag, and immediately cast on the second sock.
I felt like the knitter I always wanted to be.
That was the last time I saw that beautiful finished sock.
I made it home with the project bag and new cast on. My finished sock is probably at the bottom of a dark, dusty bin at the airport.
Or maybe at an Unclaimed Baggage store somewhere? Ya’ll keep an eye out.
I can’t say it was my first knitting mistake, but recently knitting the sleeves too short on a sweater for my grown son was a gobsmacker. I knew better…I had adjusted the sleeve length on the first sweater I knit for him; I just didn’t check my notes. However, I recovered, didn’t panic and fixed it. For the first time ever I picked up the stitches above the ribbing and then pulled out the ribbing and continued on.
I learned to knit at 7, and my mom graciously let me choose a wispy purple mohair-esque yarn that was constantly slipping off my Susan Bates aluminum needles. After she commented that it was due in part to my loose stitches, I spent an entire row pulling the yarn as tight as I possibly could on every stitch. They. Did. Not. Budge. Neither of us could get them to move. My dad came home from work and spent the better part of half an hour trying to shove them off the needle. I was so disgusted that I threw the whole thing back in a basket and STILL haven’t touched that project 20 years later.
I decided to challenge myself and signed up for a “mystery sock KAL” with a designer whose patterns are far more complicated than I have ever tried to follow. Halfway through the foot I realized that this exercise was more torture than fun. I frogged it and labeled it as a mistake. It was way more of a stretch than I wanted and I felt soooo good when I decided to admit it wasn’t a pattern for me.
PS: it was so intricate a design that I probably would not have worn them!
My epic failures are many. The most time-consuming was a rookie mistake. I thought I had gauge on Michele Wang’s “Ondawa,” with its stunning all-over cables. But when half of the body was finished and blocked, I saw that it would stretch across an under-endowed 12-year-old. Maybe. There was nothing to do but sigh, start over with a larger needle, and completely redo a solid month’s-plus worth of intricate cabling. Did I enjoy the first effort? Yes. Would I enjoy knitting it again? (hesitation …) Yes. And the do-over was beautiful. Another failure that’s seared into memory is my first effort at an in-the-round pullover. You know what happened. I did not check for a potential “twist” after cast-on and before joining. I was all the way to the armhole shaping before realizing that I had knitted a DNA-style helix and that no amount of blocking would untwist this misery. Same rule applied: Did I enjoy the first effort? Yes. … Sigh, rinse and repeat.
I knit an entire sweater in a size too large. Why didn’t I try it on?? Well, I unraveled it all and did it over and now it’s my favorite.
My second sweater was a long time ago–circa 1964. It was a plain raglan pullover with a crew neckline, knit in pieces and sewn together. Yes, that long ago.
I noticed that if I knit very loosely, the project went faster. You see the problem, right?
The crew neckline turned into a deep U, and the front was much longer than the back. I had to frog it and do it over, or Mom wouldn’t buy me any more yarn.
This was where I learned that they really mean it about gauge.