Quoted, My Dad, as Applies to Knitting

I enjoyed the heck out of my bonus weekend day--I love a three-day-weekend--and got lots of knitting done. But I had a moment with the Hawthorne shawl that made me think of my dad.

Dad had a few funny signs on his desk when I was a kid. I remember one that said something like:

1. I am always right.
2. I am never wrong.
In case of doubt, see rule 1.

But the one I was thinking of today went along the lines of:

"I made a mistake once. I thought I was wrong."

I got almost to the end of a row and thought, oh, no, I don't have the right number of stitches! I screwed something up! Waaaayyyy back at the beginning of the (really long) row!

I started to tink the row back to fix it, then I stopped. Something wasn't right. I checked on Ravelry to see if anyone else was complaining about that row, but no. I went back and looked at it again. The thing was, if I had done something at the beginning of the row that used one stitch more than it should have, I should have been one-stitch-off all across the row, and the pattern looked just right.

So I looked at the item in question again, and no, wait, that's right. But then how am I off at the end? I looked at that part of the pattern again, and light dawned on Marblehead. I was reading that bit wrong, and did in fact have the number of stitches I needed to have to do what it was actually telling me to do. Whew! So glad I figured it out before I tinked the whole damned row.

So while I was making a mistake conceptually at the end, I didn't make one actually at the beginning. Again, whew.

And it's looking good, too, if I do say so myself.