. . . Where a knot came untied, because I didn’t use the magic knitting knot? Rather than frogging the whole frigging thing back to the problem row, I only frogged back the two stitches involved and the stitches on either side of them (four stitches total) back to the row just before the problem.
The body of this particular shawl is worked in garter stitch, which is “knit every row.” But, when you look at just one side of something in garter stitch, what you see is a knit row, a purl row, a knit row, a purl row, etc., because when you knit a row on the wrong side, it shows up as purl row on the right side. *This is a key concept in knitting. (If you think about it, it’ll come to you.)
In order to fix garter stitch, you have to first turn the work so that the first row of stitches you’re going to fix is a purl row. Then you knit those stitches, turn your work and knit them again, etc.
You’ll notice I’ve used stitch markers to grab together the first three or four stitches on either side of the stitches I’m fixing to secure them and keep them from sliding off the needle and complicating the issue. Sometimes I isolate the stitches I’m fixing onto a pair of double pointed needles (DPNs) the same size as the needles I’m using for the piece. However, here, because it’s only four stitches, I’m just using the same needle all the other stitches are on.
When you frog stitches back (or drop a stitch), you get “ladder rungs” of yarn across where the stitches were taken out. You have to very carefully isolate the “rung” of the ladder that’s just above the stitches you’re fixing. That’s the yarn I use to knit those four stitches with. Then I isolate the next rung up, and knit with that one, and then the one above that , and so on, knitting upward “rung” by “rung” until I’ve picked up and worked all the “rungs.”
With a little mood music:
With a little patience, I’ve fixed the problem in about 20 minutes, whereas if I’d just frogged the whole thing back to that point to fix two little stitches, it would have taken me 4-5 hours to reknit everything back to where I was when I spotted the problem.
You may remember, this is not the first time I’ve had to fix this shawl. I flubbed up on the border a while ago — and used this same method to fix the flub.
*This method presupposes you can “read” your knitting — i.e., tell by looking whether the stitches are knits or purls. This is a very important skill, especially when it comes to keeping track of where you are in a pattern, and especially when you’re fixing mistakes.
The Owl Underground 