Desireé vs. The Sweater

I was so proud of myself...my needles were clicking away and I was making my first sweater. It was no simple thing, either. It was ribbed AND had cables. Simply stunning. I patted myself on the back...

Then I got to row 57...my cable row was somehow misaligned...THE HORROR!! I could figure it out. I looked at it, but all I could see was "wrongness". So with my heart breaking...I frogged it. All the way to the beginning. First round to the sweater, but I started over; vowing "Baby you can do it. Take your time, do it right..."

Ding-ding-ding ROUND 2.

THIS TIME I moved slowly. NOTHING was going to mess me up. First cable row - PERFECT. I knew I could do this!! I started to relax, got smug, got to row 57 again. It was wrong again. This time I did cry as I frogged it. Round 2 to the sweater.....

I had to step away from it for a while. The bag of yarn sat in it's corner (my bookshelf) taunting me every time I entered the room. I ignored it...I had to get my mind right.

Ding-ding-ding ROUND 3.

Friday afternoon and a long (loooooong) drive to Nashville were ahead of me. I was going to get this done. I was prepared mentally and physically. I'd figured out that I was somehow getting off track (DUH!!!), but I had a solution; I had tools. Yarn - check; Addi turbo - check; cable needle - check; scissors - check; row counter - check; Post It notes - check. Yep, a sista was saved by the lowly Post It note. This little yellow square with a strip of stickiness saved my sanity. Using the Post It as a line marker helped me to realize that my cable was misaligned because I was not accounting for the decrease when "ribbing to the center". I am currently on row 90!!! Round 3 to Des!! OOH-AH OOH-AH!!!!

The bedeviling center cable





Lesson learned: Make sure that what comes off your needles looks like what your reading off the paper; don't just blindly follow the pattern (or what you think the pattern is saying). Here's the front 3/4 of the sweater....