So Close

Hi Flan,
There was significant progress and significant tears with The Baby Blanket this weekend. It turns out that knitting a bit and then stopping for awhile, refreshing your memory and continuing on does not always produce the desired result. The first wave of knitting ended after approximately 1/4 of the blanket. It was then put away and not touched for a year or so. I rediscovered the pattern, pulled out my handy dandy row counter and went to work. Set down again, but for only a few months. I happily knit away, loving the pattern, the yarn and life itself. I was so proud of my progress, until Saturday night. IT came Saturday, the realization, complete with a thudding sound and quickening of breath, the realization that-with 3/4 of the blanket completed- I had made a slight "design modification" 1/4 of the way in. I almost cried, deep breathing was practiced and Time Out was enacted.

For the first bit I had adhered to the pattern and knit two garter ridges, an eyelet flower, then two more garter ridges. Coming back a year later I, for some unknown reason, decided to eliminate the last garter ridge. Therefore, the squares have two ridges, flower, then one ridge. There was far too much knitting invested to rip and the thought made me light headed. I just couldn't handle the thought of having to redo that much. (Though a deep and intense discussion about the quality of duplicate stitches raged in my head. Sacrifices to the knitting overlords were considered).

Gracie and I layed it out, surveyed and discussed. There were three real and one ridiculous possiblities.
1. Continue with "modification"
2. Undo the beginning, and redo with "modification"
3. Continue with pattern as it written, adding second ridge.
4. Rip.

We decided that although the two ridges look better, there are few people as anal as I and most probably wouldn't notice. We went with Option 1.

The happy news: It's almost done! I'm so excited and almost stayed up until the wee hours but remembered that my knitting quality sharply diminshes when sleep is removed. On the whole it is looking pretty good.

Left on the needles:
1. 2/3 of a sock for The Hubby. Happily this is the second sock of the pair.
2. Mittens for me. I need to do 3/4 inch more on the hand as well as thumb on mitten 1 then knit mitten 2.

Am doing well trying to bare the needles, however, after completing the Baby Blanket I might need something quick and fast and am thinking about the cabled fingerless gloves from knitty. The yarn sirens are calling and my willpower is shrinking.

On a completely random note, I'm thinking about switching fields and going into Library Science. What do you think?