Surgery

OK, so I don't know if you could really see it in the last post but there are about two inches worth of extra fabric that I knitted into this BSJ. Maybe I was just watching TV, really hard, maybe it was the care and feeding of my family, maybe I need to lay off the soda for awhile, I don't know. I just made too many decreases and then compensated all the way back (funny, I never noticed the stitch count of by a frickin' MILE). Briefly, I toyed with the idea of starting over. I could put a picture of the jacket in the bag and jovially explain what happened and we could all share a good laugh about what sometimes goes into hand made items...or not. I wasn't going to a "Handmade Nation" baby shower. These were muggles and there was no way they were going to get my joke. It wasn't going to fly. My options were dwindling because the shower was the next day. Should I rush out and by store bought stuff? Raid HRC's room for something without stains or evidence of wear and tear? Nah, too much like work. And so, left with the knowledge that it would probably take less time to fix than redo, I prepped the little thing for it's big day. I eyeballed about where and using clippies, determined exactly where surgery should take place (I'm not a doctor but I play one on my blog). I picked up stitches all the way across using circular needles on each end of the offending fold. I counted stitches over, and over just to make sure and then--this is where the crazy started and my family started to give me a wide berth-- I cut. out. the. middle.

I had to knit a row on one end to even everything out and add a row back in. The 'wrong' side was more difficult because I was tinking backward (that is, I was unraveling from the cast on end, not at all like frogging from the cast off end) and the decreases didn't want to unravel. I ended up taking out three and adding back two rows for that side (that may have been where the crying started--trying to pick apart double decreases on the wrong end)

Finally, (after triple counting stitches and getting an extra beer) I got my Kirchner instructions and settled in for seaming it back together.

And, Viola! Surgery complete...

I should probably mention that during the seaming, while I'm trying to wrangle too much thread, (because if I ran out of thread before the end after all of this, most if not all of the 7 words you can't say on television were going to be used, copiously) I knocked my beer over. Yep, beer on a baby jacket...and me, the chair and the floor. I didn't even flinch, just kept on with the, "knit *off*, purl *on*; purl *off*, knit *on*" in stony silence. My DH admitted later that he took HRC with him into the other room as he feared for their safety :)