When one is knitting lace, especially with black yarn, one should always put in a life line. This is particularly important when one is beginning a new chart.
How do I know this? Other than having read this valuable bit of advice on numerous websites and knitting books. Experience is a powerful teacher.
You see, I've been working on the Swallowtail Shawl and finally got to the end of the first two charts and began the lily chart. First off those stupid "Nupps" are a total pain in the ass, secondly, I was knitting this late at night, in bed, while tired. The inevitable screw up occurred as scripted by the knitting imps. The next morning I was required to admit defeat and figure out a way to rip back. I really didn't relish the idea of "tinking" back three rows of this pattern, nupps included. Had I inserted a life line before proceeding to the new chart this would be no problem.
But of course, I hadn't. So I had to do the next best thing, do it now. I sat myself up at the kitchen table in the bright sunlight and with the strong overhead light illuminating my way. I carefully threaded a Chibi with a bright purple sock yarn and tried my best to thread it through a row of stockinette stitches.
Once I was back to my life line, I took a smaller needle (size 1) and carefully picked up my stitches. I personally wasn't too careful about whether or not I had my stitches positioned on the needle correctly. I'm pretty good at reading my stitches and if I came across a stitch that was backward I would just knit into the correct side of the loop.
I'm happy to say that I currently have the correct number of stitches on my needles and am preparing to proceed. First of all I'm going to go google "Swallowtail Shawl nupps" and decide how I want to handle those bastards.
Progress on the Dog Poop aka Monkey socks is now past the heel turns. Photos coming in the near future...
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