Tink, Tink, Tink, Count, Count, Count, Frog, Frog, Frog

On Thursday or Friday I put the feather and fan stole aside because it was badly goofed up. We had company on Friday and Saturday and the eight skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport in Rainbow arrived. All those skeins were just burning a hole in my pocket, so I wound two off into center-pull balls. Doing that gave me a better idea of how it would look knitted, which is to say quite different, indeed.

Well, of course, once I had the balls of yarn it was pretty much inevitable that I'd start knitting. We've all been here before, haven't we? So I cast on thirteen stitches and knitted the first Argosy baby blanket square. It went quickly and easily, so I knitted the next row of three squares. One thing led to another and now I've just finished the tenth row of squares, for a total of a hundred squares. I discovered that one skein will make about seventy squares.

The reason that there are no snapshots of the blanket is that I put it down, rather regretfully, and swore that I won't pick it up again until the stole is done. I have to finish the stole in the next two weeks. That shouldn't be difficult, once I get it straightened out.

The problem is that I have acquired six extra stitches, 108 instead of 102. This probably means that I either didn't k2tog six times or I did yo, k1 six extra times. I'm inclined to think it's the former because I don't see any extra yarn overs anywhere. Of course, I don't see any missing k2tog, either.

So I started by tinking one row. No change. Then I tinked two rows. I'm using a circular needle, for convenience, so taking out two rows is easy and doesn't take much longer than tinking one row. That's different, 107. Recounting, it's still 108. So I tinked two more rows. Still 108. I pulled the needle out and frogged about an inch and a half, which is about a dozen rows. I then took out one more row as I picked up the stitches.

Success! There are now just 102 stitches. Of course, since I ripped out the offending portion I have no idea what I did wrong.

I took out about eighteen rows, which is four and a half pattern repeats, and the stole doesn't look any shorter than it did. I'm in that dreaded, relativistic region of no apparent progress no matter how many rows are knitted or unknitted. This makes some people give up; they knit and they knit and they knit and there's no progress at all. However, I'm not fooled. I know that the stole will suddenly, mysteriously put on a growth spurt, probably while my back is turned.