Digression into knitting

Knitting: I'm working on a sweater for myself, a cotton/silk/bamboo blend in a muted shade of teal. The pattern is interesting because you make the sweater top down, and once you have the sleeve holes you pick up stitches and then knit the sleeves in, also top down. It involves a lot of short rows and counting, which should have warned me right at the beginning, but I was entranced with the idea. No seams to sew up at the end. And you can try it on as you go, presumably ending up with something that fits.

First thing was that I discovered that if you have three parts of the sweater (two sleeves and a body) all in progress, you need a lot of needles. I began to feel as though I was knitting a bagpipe. Then I discovered that if you want to try it on, you need to slip the stitches off the needles onto waste yarn or you'll impale yourself.

And then I got to the second sleeve. The first went so smoothly that I was already planning several more sweaters made the same way.

I am now on my fourth iteration of the second sleeve. How many dumb mistakes can I make with short rows? The latest was a real beginner's goof. I got through the short rows and on the next row started back in on the round, and somehow went backwards. Naturally it took a while to notice that the pattern wasn't working, and then I wasn't able to frog back just to the place where I screwed up, so it's back to the beginning.

In Liberian English you don't have to take responsibility for this kind of thing. You just say, "De ting broke," meaning I didn't do it. It must have been some cosmic error on Someone's part. I just wish Someone would fix it.