Which wheels? The Mommy van kind? no. The spinning wheel kind? again, no. The lace project kind? Why, how did you guess?
On Sunday I received the pattern for a lovely test knit. The designer requested that the item be completed in one week and asked for fast knitters. Now, I pride myself on being a quick knitter, and you can probably guess that this was where things started to go wrong. The whole pride goeth before a fall kinda thing, you know. I totally jinxed myself.
The next thing to go wrong (because this is me we're talking about here and there's always another thing to go wrong) was getting confused about the pattern, three times. This is not the fault of the pattern or designer, I will completely own up to that. I messed up. Short and simple.
I recovered and moved along. I actually caught up to where the other knitters were in the charts. Woohoo! But wait, congratulations are not in order here and this time, it's not my fault. I'm fully aware that this is going to sound immature and like I'm making up excuses, but it's true, I swear.
The dog did it.
The almost completely blind and almost completely deaf 18 year old dog walked between my project and my ball of yarn. I was in another part of the house making a cup of tea. Said dog was clueless as to the fact that she had done this, so she continued on her plodding little way, pulling the yarn. Could it have pulled from the ball? Yes. Did it? Oh no.
Stitch, by small stitch, the yarn came away from the needles. Drop, drop, drop. Approximately 10 stitches fell off the needle and began running in many different directions. Have you ever been working on a lace project and have this happen? For me, there was no recovery. Too much of the lace became unraveled for me to even consider getting out the crochet needle and patching it up. Meanwhile, the dog walked on, with me yelling all the while. She never heard a thing.
I caught up with her eventually and untangled her and then sat down and stared at what was left of my pretty lace. Believe it or not, I was very calm at this point for a couple of reasons: One, the dog didn't know she was doing this and is so pitiful already that it's difficult to yell at the little geriatric. Two, I didn't do it. If I had done this, the yarn would probably be lying in the bottom of a very deep, dark hole from the stress of it all.
The stretchy crocheted cast-on, with which I have already become intimately familiar due to previous mistakes, have become acquainted once again. I'm on row three now for the fifth time.
Now how am I ever going to explain this to the poor designer who needs it in just a couple of days?
