Hat Horrors

Have you ever felt like a piece of knitting actually hates you? And when you aren't in the room it chuckles an evil little laugh, rubs it's nubby little stitches together and forms diabolic plans that are sure to leave you tearing your hair out for hours on end?

This hat is evil I tell you. Everything was going fine until it came time to graft the band together. I was proceeding merrily along, quite proud of myself for getting the hang of a provisional cast on so quickly when the devil incarnate reared it's purly little head and grinned. Well, reared it's purly little head and then dove back into the cable band disappearing in the void forever would be more like it! Upon undoing the provisional cast on I realized I was one stitch short. Crap. Okay, no huge biggy. I'll just find where it dropped and pick it back up.

MUCH EASIER SAID THAN DONE! Recall that this scarf & hat set is my first go at cables. This is now my first attempt to fix a dropped stitch with cables. So I poked... and prodded.. and stretched.. and peered... and couldn't figure out what the bejeebies I'd done wrong! So I decided to rip out the whole row and pick up the stitches all fresh and new in the next row.

Nice plan, not so good put into practice. Still one stitch short. What the @#$^@^! I spent nearly two hours trying to figure this out. I finally threaded a piece of waste yarn, went down an inch to the nearest clearly uncabled row and proceeded to lace through a lifeline. Then I ripped. Presto! Picked up the stitches and... @#$#%!!!!!!!!!!!! Still one short. {Insert VERY disgruntled look here.} At this point I threw the whole thing down, watched the end of Ghost, and ate some more Halloween candy instead.

After dinner I gave it another go. After ripping yet another row I gave up and seamed the stupid thing one stitch short, vowing never again to be so perfectionist. If I couldn't see a ladder then who friggin cares if I dropped a stitch or not! Take that you fuzzy-mucking-thingamapoo hat band! After it was done you couldn't tell a difference. And I still have no clue where that stitch went. I'm sure it didn't help that I woke up with a nasty cold this morning and was feeling icky and irritable. But did the knitting demon actually KNOW this?!

Then I got to try something new... picking up stitches. Piece of cake! Thank goodness. Now... the rest of this hat better go more smoothly. I'm going to pick up some 10.5 dpns at the craft store tomorrow for my decreases. I've done the magic loop method in the past but mine always comes out slanted in one direction. Drives me up a wall! I think I prefer dpns. I haven't used them since last January but we'll see!