Oopsies R Us

Voice #1: It's not so bad. You can pick up stitches around the wrist and add 10 rounds.

Voice #2: The project is so small, you can just frog it and start over.

Voice #3: Il faut que tu arrêtes de fumer la moquette! How can you screw up something that is supposed to be "mindless"?!

"Il faut que tu arrêtes de fumer la moquette" literally translates to: you have to stop smoking the carpet. I don't know if I use this phrase correctly, however I like to use it in place of : you have to stop smoking crack.

I can't recall if I have ever learned the subjunctive verb tense/mood in French. I really don't think it was ever covered in any of my French classes! Of course this was aeons ago and my memory is not what it used to be. Anyhow, I have somehow picked up bits and pieces of the subjunctive over the years and am still trying to get a good grasp of how to use it.

The subjunctive mood is used when there is uncertainty, opinion, wish (or order or obligation), or feeling.

The indicative mood is used when there is certainty, judgment, promise (or resolution or decision), or observation (or declaration or statement).

One thing that has stuck in my mind is that the impersonal expression il faut que is followed by a subjunctive verb. So in the phrase "il faut que tu arrêtes...", the verb arrêter (to stop) is in the subjunctive. Unfortunately this is not evident since the 2nd person singular conjugation of arrêter is identical in both the (present) indicative and (present) subjunctive. One would have to contrive to use a verb where the conjugation is different in order to demonstrate that one understands when to use the subjunctive.

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of the tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way
- No Leaf Clover, Metallica

Warm Hands, Warm Thumbs Fingerless Mitts outline
Elann Highland Wool, Coffee Bean Brown
4.5 mm, US7 needles

So I thought I was done with the main part of this mitt and was getting ready to bind off. Sure it looks fine in the photo above.

But when you look at it side-by-side with the grey pair....

... you see where the problem lies! The wrist-to-thumb-gusset section is too short. I tried on the mitt and it is even too short for my small hands. This is supposed to be larger, for a guy's hand. What I should have done was knit 10 more rounds before starting the thumb gusset. I have no idea how this happened. I was probably engrossed in whatever we were watching on TV. The funny thing is that this is supposed to be a "mindless" knitting project!

I could do as Voice #1 suggests. It would be the quickest workaround and it would probably turn out OK. But I would know about the blunder and that would bother me even though the mitts would be gifted and then I would never have to see the blunder.

So I followed Voice #2's suggestion and ripped back. Now you'd think the problem would have been solved at this point, but...

I ripped back to the top of the thumb gusset (where the red yarn was holding the thumb stitches) and then used my needles to pick up stitches on that round. Then stupid me went on to knitting onwards from that point for several rounds before I realized that I should have ripped back to the bottom of the thumb gusset.

Let's just say I've spent so much time going backwards on this project that I am thoroughly disgusted with it!!! (And the fact that this 100% wool yarn "sticks" which makes ripping back a slow painful progress did not help)

Ack! Lookie at this boo boo! The mistake is inside the red circle. The purple circle shows what it should have looked like. It looks like a K2Tog gone bad. I didn't notice the error because my stitch count was correct and didn't pick up on any problems as I was knitting the following row.

Now if this were a simple cable error, then I might have just dropped some stitches down to fix the cable error. I have to wonder if the lace experts do something similar when fixing lace errors. I know I wouldn't be able to do it. So I'm off to tink back a few rows...

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