It Happens to Everyone

I take satisfaction in knowing I am not the only one to make enormous, colossal, gigantic, monumental mistakes in knitting.  There are plenty of such mistakes almost every time I pick up the needles.  Some I can fix without too much effort, some are fiddly, some can be finessed into looking OK, and others just have to be frogged.  In short, if you knit you also need to know how to appropriately correct your knitting.

Stephanie labeled this photo "dammit" (photo from yarnharlot.ca)

The photo above is from the Yarn Harlot blog.  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is knitting from a Schoolhouse Press publication called Latvian Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis.  Aren't these Fair Isle beauties exquisite.  Stephanie writes with great satisfaction about her attention to detail as she worked the braids on the mittens with the left mitten's facing left and the right, right.

But as you continue to look at those mittens you start thinking your eyes have gone awry.  The colours of the designs above the braid pop in different ways and then it hits you.  Sure enough, Stephanie reversed the main colour so the design is done in the dark teal on the right mitten in the photo and in white on the left.   Now you see it , right?  It is like an optical illusion.  She got the detail of that braid so perfect and then missed the rather big deal of main vs. contrast colours.*

I am not laughing at the Yarn Harlot here, indeed quite the opposite.  How many times have I done things like the following:  knit the head of a dog facing its tail. frogged a baby sweater so often the yarn started to show wear and tear, or done surgery to repair a mistake in lace.  If I didn't show you the mistakes I make and have to fix there would be days without anything to report.  I totally sympathize with Stephanie.

This is handmade work (not created by a machine) so it will be imperfect and sometimes the head and the hands don't accurately follow the directions or they just miss a big element of the knitting.  It happens.  But for the Yarn Harlot to publicly admit a mistake like the one above, well it shows even the stars of knitting are human.  For someone like me, not preeminent in the field of knitting in any way, it is totally fine to make the types of mistakes I do.  Thanks Harlot for your honesty.  You could have left the mistake unreported, but instead by sharing it you made me realize you too are human and not necessarily a knitting deity.  Even you make colossal errors.

BTW not more than three days later the Yarn Harlot showed off the finished pair.  You can see those Latvian mittens, here.

Postscript ~~ From the Yarn Harlot's book, At Knit's End, Stephanie writes the following:

      There is nothing like working out a piece of knitting to make you feel intelligent.  Of course,
       there's nothing quite like getting your superior intelligence kicked by a piece of yarn and 
       two needles to let the air right out of that self-confidence.

*The solution suggested by knitters reading the post?  Make two other mittens, one to match the dark teal as the main colour, the other to match the white background.  Clever knitters!  They too have had to fix mistakes like this I suspect.