I am still not doing much knitting – a few rows here and
there.  I did sit down to knit after I
came home from Bible Study on Tuesday. 
Due to unpredictable and random events, there was no one in the house
when I arrived.  Just the 6 cats.  I admit that it felt a little creepy.  But, determined to take advantage of the
quiet, I sat down to knit.  Got up to
shut the kitten in my bedroom and sat down to knit.  Got up to answer the phone and sat down to
knit.  Got up to put a load of towels in
the washer and sat down to knit.

Anyhow, I did finally start to knit – and discovered that my
pattern was off – that is, I had been doing it wrong for 6 rows or so.  Nuts! 
Except I did not say “Nuts.” 

It was a matter of not off-setting an off-set pattern.  So, instead of the traditional
every-other-sort-of-thing, I had a column of every-other-ness beside another
column of every-other-ness.  Since this
pattern (The Flagon Stitch done with beads, for the record) constitutes the
right side of the piece while a lace pattern (which was going along swimmingly
with no errors, thank you very much) makes up the left side, I really-really did
not want to rip back and start all over. 
So, a Design Elephant was born.

A Design Elephant is an error (a large and unmistakable
deviation) that I decide I can live with by treating it as a part of the
design.  I coined this phrase at Stitches
West last year.  The instructor was
explaining that something inadvertent can become a Design Element and I quipped
up something about it sometimes being a Design Elephant – and the phrase stuck
in my mind and has come up again more times than I would like to admit. 

I am actually pretty fond of Design Elephants. Come to think
of it, I like them a lot! They make my knitted pieces so much more
interesting.  And they force me to think
outside the repeat-between-the-lines box. 

There is a line from an Ogden Nash poem that reads: Where
there is a monster, there’s a miracle. 
It is kind of like that – I space out a bit and suddenly Columned Beaded
Flagon Stitch exists.  The creative
process is pretty cool.