The cowl came back

It's hardly the very next day, in this case, however. More like four months.

Well, close enough. That's right, I'm working on the Good Luck Cowl again. As you might recall, Piggy's had a rather embarrassing amount of trouble with this lacy little number; at one point in December, the frustration drove me to contemplate throwing myself out the window. (The fact I live in a basement suite means that wouldn't actually have put me out of my misery...but I digress.)

The fault is all mine; as I've said before, Christianne Gerstner's lovely pattern is very clear and free from errors. Just ask the 150+ people on Ravelry who've used it without losing their marbles (and their knitting mojo).

Piggy just has an issue with yarn overs. And concentration. Not a good combo.

Anyhoo...after several (and I do mean several) false starts, and a belated acceptance of the suggestion that the use of stitchmarkers might be helpful, I managed to get a fair bit done.

But then something went horribly wrong; something somewhere was missed, my stitch count was off, and my attempts to tink back failed miserably. Well, my patience failed, anyway. So I put what had become known in my circle as the "Bad Luck Cowl" away.

I dragged it out again this week, with plans to frog it and start over for a few last-minute points for March's Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA) homework. The assigned lesson: something that requires "constant vigilance." I figured the Bad Luck Cowl fit the bill.

I did have second thoughts when I dragged the cowl out on Tuesday at lunch...




...and realized I had completed more repeats of the pattern than I had remembered. I was more than halfway finished.

I briefly contemplated ditching the DADA assignment (one cannot use WIPs for homework), and attempting to fix the problem and press on.

Well, I pressed on, alright. With the frogging. (Much to the horror of my Hufflepuff co-worker Siobhan.)







And cast on again. And again. And again. It's actually pretty standard procedure; I seem to require at least three starts on every project. Often it's because I've mis-estimated the length of tail required, but occasionally for something even more stupid. In this case, I forgot that the three rows of garter stitch border meant I needed to purl rounds one and three, and knit round 2. Ugh.

After work Siobhan and I headed to a coffee shop a couple of blocks away for a new, hopefully regular Tuesday evening knit group. We were a nice group of four, and I was pretty chatty...which meant I needed to tink back that first row -- I refused to frog it again.

As of Wednesday afternoon...one completed pattern repeat, with no issues at all:




Maybe my luck is finally changing...

(touch wood)