Smarty Pants

I recently showed Tia my progress on the baby sweater, which unfortunately (like my blogging) has been impacted by the need to do work-related items like conference travel, non-billable work, etc. Anyway...when she looked at the back piece, she asked how I worked the stripes because there were very few loose ends. I told her that after a couple of rows, I got the idea to carry the yarn of the non-working skein up the sides of the piece, keeping everything neat by wrapping the active yarn around it. Here's a picture showing what I mean.

So Tia asks how I learned to do that, did I see it in a book, and I said, "Nah, I just didn't want to weave in all those ends so I improvised." She looks at me and says, "Well, aren't you Miss Smarty Pants!" Now, I don't usually think of myself as all that clever, so that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That feeling continued as I worked through both front pieces and as I started into the first arm.

Unfortunately, I now have first-hand proof of why wiser knitters caution against smugness and too much confidence, lest the Knitting Gods (or Goddesses, if you prefer) strike you down and wreak havoc on your knitting. The night I completed the second front piece, I decided to push on just a little bit more before calling it a night. I got out the pattern, read through the arm instructions, and cast on the required number of stitches for the ribbing. I finished the ribbing and once again looked at the instructions. They called for one increase on either side of every 4th row repeated 6 times, followed by one increase on either side of every 6th row repeated 3 times. "No sweat," I thought, but I was getting sleepy and decided to quit for the night. The next day when I returned to my little sleeve, I proceeded blissfully along with my color changes, sans increases. I was such a "smarty pants" that it wasn't until I had 8 inches or so of the sleeve done that I checked the pattern again and noticed my failure to incorporate any increases! Riiiippppp!

Next time when someone tells me I'm a knitting smarty pants, I'm ignoring them.