How far can you run a stitch down?

#1

Sorry, that title kind of sucks. I couldn’t figure out a concise way to ask:

I am making the Scrunchable Scarf and I just noticed I made a couple of errors about a million rows back. The pattern is so simple, I don’t know how I could have messed up. It’s just knit, knit, purl on both sides, giving a column of knit stitches, a column of purl stitches, and a column of seed stitch.

I have 3 errant knit stitches that should have been purled, which are located 42 rows below where I am now. And one purl stitch that should have been knitted (well I guess that’s all depending on which side is up, but you get the gist) that is about 100 rows down. AAAAAAGH.

I am the type that usually fixes errors instead of leaving them but I am loathe to rip 12 inches of this scarf. It is a gift for my Dad, who may or may not even wear it, and may or may not notice. The errors didn’t jump out at me until now, and of course now they are glaring and bothering the crap out of me.

I’ve run down stitches a few rows before to fix them, but can you run something down 42 (or 100) rows? I am not even sure that is possible.

What do you guys think?

#2

You can go back as far as needed. I’d do them one at a time and make sure you stop any other sts from creeping off the ends of your ndls while you’re working on the problematic ones. Sounds like the scarf is simple enough so a crochet hook would allow you to rework them back up easily enough because you can visually see how they need to be corrected and appear.

I’ve worked back MANY rows w/o a problem. But then I, too, can be quite anal about this type of thing. I know some would suggest leaving as is, esp if the recip won’t notice. But it would bug me…

cam

#3

Cam, thanks for the encouragement!

I fixed the 4 (dang, thought there were only three!) that were mistakes on seed stitch rows, 42 rows back. Ugh. Seed stitch is a pain to fix.

But each row was progressively easier, and it does look fine. I guess I was worried the yarn would stretch out. It is just a plain alpaca wool, nothing weird or extra fuzzy. I wouldn’t have tried it with novelty yarn. Well, I don’t use that kind of yarn anyway, I tend to knit boring. :teehee:

Now I have 2 (dang, I thought it was only one!) more to do, about 100 rows back. One is a knit stitch row, and one is another seed stitch row. :ugh:

I am getting fortified with a little dinner and then will proceed!

#4

Most yarn is a lot more forgiving than you think; you can rework it, fix it, do all sorts of things to it without doing something you don’t want it to.

#5

I am getting fortified with a little dinner and then will proceed!

In the wee hours of the morn? Glad you were able to address those ‘gaffes’ and you found it got easier. Seed would be more time consuming. But with all Ks or Ps it’s just a matter of working a chain back up. Some yarns might be more difficult in grabbing the strand but once done a little tug on the surrounding sts will usually make the correction virtually disappear.

cam

#6

I work nights so my meal schedules are pretty random.

I eventually found 6 wrong stitches, only 1 was knit. All the others were seed stitch. But it came out fine, just took some time. Pics on my blog if you want to see. Gotta run to work so no time to post them here, too. :woohoo:

#7

yes, great knitters are good at fixing mistakes. I have dropped a stitch 11 stitches down, I just worked to the offending stitch, put some point protecters on the needles and started dropping/fixing.
and another time, I had to drop 20 stitches (seperately of course) for 4 inches, because I had used the wrong type of increase (which is also really hard to try and fix).

that is my favorite thing about knitting. I was so discouraged when I just started to learn how to knit, I thought it was so much more difficult than crochet, but now that I know how to do both, I find that knitting is sooooooo much more forgiving. You can correct a mistake on Row #2 when you are working on Row # 99 but in crochet the only way to correct the error is to rip it all out and do it again.

So yes, if you have a crochet hook, the will, and a lot of time on your hands. You can fix just about anything.

#8

Pics on my blog if you want to see.

Looks great! Hopefully your dad will wear and appreciate it.

cam