Fabric and craft sprees are a great place to get into trouble — as when the fiber and glue fumes hit  and all those sparkly sequins and beads start to mesmerize your brain and the next thing you know you are filling your cart with supplies for cheap-chic patio planters and glittery faux flora wreathes and retro necklaces…. So, when I had to pick up buttons for a baby sweater a couple of weeks ago, I tried to stay focused.  

Except that I let myself scan the book rack on my way to the check-out counter.  Oops.

And that is how I ended up crocheting.  I saw Yumiko Alexander’s Rustic Modern Crochet and I was hooked by the cover piece and then completely seduced by every photo inside.  I am a huge fan of her work — in fact I have 2 of her designs on my needles at present and have some exquisite yarn from her DanDoh line for a third garment.

I decided on 2 garments for summer wear:  the spiderwebby Sea Turtle poncho on the cover and a nicely tentacle-y wrap called Sea Flower.  Perfect pieces to wear over a tank top.  Crochet is great with cotton and linen yarns — and it works up quickly, especially in chunky yarns. I crocheted a drapey lace piece last summer out of jute-colored yarn which looks kinds like a macrame plant hanger from the 70’s and I love it!  On the Yarn Crawl, I found just the cotton yarns I needed and I was good to go!

I got a few rows into the pattern, realized I had made a mistake, ripped it out, and started again.  No big deal.  Got further into the pattern and, checking it against the chart, found that I had one too many stitches.  Ripped it out.  Got further this time — almost through the first repeat of the pattern — and something was definitely wrong.  I started comparing the written instructions with the chart and found discrepancies!  I had been following  the written instructions because I was a little out of practice with crochet charts which look like this:

They show exactly what everything looks like and what stitches to work where, but I needed the written directions to get me oriented.  Unfortunately.  Because the chart was perfect and the written instructions were faulty.  And what had I NOT done that one should ALWAYS do before starting a pattern?

I had forgotten to CHECK THE ERRATA!!

So, I gave myself a quick but stern lecture and dug into the errata section at Interweave (the publisher).  Lo and behold, there were errors in the pattern.  I penciled the corrections into my book and ripped out my work and started again.  And this time I referred to the chart as well as the written instructions, checking back and forth.  Counting the symbols.  Counting my stitches.  And something was wrong.  Careful (painstakingly careful of the checking and re-checking kind of careful) analysis of the pattern made it clear that the errata had errata! Argh!

Now, I accept that errata is inevitable because there are so many numbers and abbreviations in knitting and crochet patterns.  That is why we assume there might be a mistake and so we do what I had failed to do:  check the errata straight off before even getting our needles or hooks warmed up.  BUT I believe that it is not unreasonable to assume that the errata is corrected correctly by a reputable publisher.  So, I was a little exasperated.  As in, ranting — probably unintelligibly — about “19 being switched to 18 here just because it had been switched there, can you even…!” and “the correction to Row 4 making it no longer indentical to Row 8, for the love of all…!” to my husband all while jabbing my finger from line to chart and rolling my eyes. (You know all those serene paintings of women doing needlework — well, it is not always like that, is it?)

And so I corrected the corrections in  my book.  Then, I ripped out my work.  Again.  And started over.

But this time it worked!  I rolled through the entire first repeat of the pattern and sailed into the next, hitchless and glitchless 🙂