"One...Two...Five!" "Three, Sir!" "Three!!"

Remember that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? That was me last night.

Travis hit the sack around 11:00. I stayed up to knit two last rounds, as I had determined I NEEDED to finish the cuff/leg of my first Bells & Whistle sock last night, since I hadn't gotten much done on them. (You know, turns out teleworking isn't really conducive to knitting all day after all. Damn. Whatever, it's still conducive to working all day without pants.)

Ten minutes, tops - right? Yeah. At 1:30 A.M., I finally headed upstairs with those two rounds complete.

Jeeezus.

I had finished Chart A, and only had the first two rounds of Chart B. I knit the first round of Chart B. I examined four little lost leftover stitches still hanging on my needle. I tinked. I counted...not enough stitches, bad tinking. I tinked another row...enough stitches. I knit back around to start Chart B. I examined the charts. Chart A, ends with 68 stitches. (Count....good.) After Round 1 of Chart B, I should have 64 stitches. Mmmkay. Chart B's Round 1 operates on 64 stitches, including two 2/2 cables. Wait....where were the decreases, then?!

Review chart. Count live stitches. Count charted stitches. Squirm around on couch. Count stitches. Stare at pattern. Look at Interweave website for errata. None. Google for errata. No one's knitting these yet. Google for designer's name, find blog, check blog for errata notice - nope. Stare at chart some more. Email Interweave. (You annoyed yet? Me too.) Stare at chart. Find a place to squeeze in some decreases, knit the round. Realize this is causing there to be too few stitches now. Try to figure out where to add in increases. Consider taking up origami instead. Realize it's 1:11 a.m. Sigh loudly. Pray Travis doesn't wake up and come downstairs to declare me officially insane. Think hard about giving in and going to bed. Flatly refuse.

Glance back at chart and suddenly realize, as if God Himself had highlighted it - out of sheer frustration that one of His own couldn't FREAKING COUNT - that the two cables in the chart are each 3/2 crosses, not 2/2 crosses. Work that chart twice....hey, there's those four stitches I'm missing.

Hang head. Email Interweave again apologizing and praising their perfect pattern. Tink and knit properly. Shove damned sock in bag and tell it to think about what it did.

I think one of the healthy things about knitting for me is that I have to recognize that I can't do things perfectly all the time. And that NO ONE does. No knitter has managed to avoid facing some dumb mistake or oversight. As a matter of fact, the BETTER we get, seems the MORE likely we are to make mistakes. We don't have to agonize over every step of the process, and we stop all that beginner stuff: scrutinizing patterns, reading them over and over, looking stuff up, writing notes to ourselves - it becomes very "Yeah, sure, got it - no problemo" and we just dash right in headlong. We get really good at picking up those gusset stitches and grafting the toe, but we forget to turn the heel or skip twelve rounds of decreases. I'm waiting for the dreaded "At the same time," error that the Harlot is so fond of. It's bound to happen someday.

But not today. Bring on the 3/2 cross, bitches. I'm ready for you now.