Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

I would dearly like to crow to you that I reached the end of the center section and that the three pieces of my mother’s wrap are now blocked to size and drying. Alas, I cannot. Oh, I can tell you I nearly reached the end. I was very close. But just as victory was in sight, I realized I made a mistake at the beginning of the section. And because it is me, it was not a little mistake that could be blocked out or ignored. No. It was a project ruining mistake. And so the frogging and the swearing began,

I am grandly upset with myself because I should have realized the issue when I made it. You see, I worked a little double crochet together shell sort of thing over four stitches in one row. It was cute and I was happy with it. At first, I worked a row of linked doubles for the next row, but that didn’t feel open enough to me. So I frogged that row and worked a row of what I naively thought was a reverse image of my weird little shells. Here was the problem: The first shell was worked over four stitches, in which the next shell started in the last stitch of the former shell. The reverse image was worked over five stitches. Since it was worked into the top of the shells from the last row, there was no overlap to happen. There were 12 shells in the first row with 4 stitches in each shell. There were 12 reverse shells in the second row with 5 stitches in each shell. I added 12 stitches to the row. Because I foolishly thought the weird lumpiness in the next row of linked doubles was a result of working it over open rows that needed to be blocked, I kept going. To nearly the end of the section. I realized my mistake when I tried to make my stitch counts match after the single crochet v-stitch section.

This is the problem with designing on the hook. It’s how I work so I can capture what feels right for a given project in the moment, but it leads to issues. And those issues invariably lead to frogging and swearing and putting projects aside for a bit while I silently rage at them for being a physical manifestation of my mistakes. How dare they?!

I know better. I would like to blame my peri-menopausal brain, but I think I was just careless. I will return to the center section. Fortunately for me, the deadline looming over my mother’s wrap has been extended, so I have time to take a little break, pet other projects that I have been more careful with, and start the center bit again with a clearer head. I’m thinking of just doing a run of single crochet v-stitches this time. Nice and easy. No surprises. 

I hope your week of crafting holds only good surprises!