more woes

Last night was one step forward two steps back in knitting terms. I picked up all the stitches I'd ripped out and started knitting the rib border again. I had the exact same problem (big holes at the point of the V) and was ready to rip it out again when I realised the problem and was able to fix it. Where the V splits you have to start a new ball of yarn for one side. I hadn't secured the end of this yarn as I wanted to make the whole thing as easy to frog as possible in case it doesn't fit its recipient. Once I had tightened this up the hole mostly went.

Then came the next problem. The ribbing is k1p1 with a decrease either side of the central stitch on each row. So on one side the decreases are knit decreases, on the next purl decreases.

Somehow (goodness knows how, I counted many times) I had ended up with an odd number of stitches on one side. So when I got the the decrease section the ribbing was out of sync. At this point I had managed 2 rows.

ARGH!

so

riiiiiip!

I managed to pick up the stiches without having to go back to the crochet hook (which is the only way I can actually pick up new stitches) but then the first row took me ages because I managed to pick up all the stitches backwards so had to untwist each one as I went.

So there is one row of ribbing done. 2 more to go, the ribbing for both sleeves and the sewing up to do. Ideally by the end of today. I'm pretty sure thats not possible. Its certainly making it very hard to concentrate at work today.