It Looks Bad for the Baltic Mittens

Despite feeling that I hit my stride, events have conspired against me and the Baltic mittens. I've been merrily knitting along, watching listening to the Olympics, staying up way past my bedtime, just knowing that I was going to blow everyone away with the brilliance and beauty of the Baltic mittens.

Ha!

I was knitting away on Thursday and was in a good position to complete the first mitten on Friday, pretty much on schedule. Then as I was admiring my handiwork, I noticed this little loop sticking out about five or six rows down.

Here's Teri coming down the row....looking good....great form....not too tense...but wait! Oh no, Jim, she's dropped a stitch! What a heartbreaker for this knitting powerhouse from Leesburg, Virginia!

Well, Bill, these are the setbacks that determine the true Olympians. Teri's shown a lot of guts and fortitude in the past, and I think she has what it takes to overcome this.

Bill, I've heard it said that Teri is "small but powerful." Do you think that is going to help her through the second half of the mitten biathalon?

Oh definitely, Jim. This is the time where true Olympians dig down deep and summon the strength to carry on. But you know, Jim, you can train and train, but you can't train for the thrill of actual competition, for the flood of adrenalin that comes as you approach the end of a row.

That's what makes these knitting Olympians great.

What to do? What to do? Do I ignore it and hope it goes away? Do I try to repair it in place? Do I tink back and fix it? Given that it was midnight and I was tired, I did what all good Olympians do...I went to bed.

I spent the next day pondering the recovery. And Saturday morning, when I examined the mitten, I knew I had but one choice. Tink, and tink some more. And you'd think that with the weekend here, I'd get in some good knitting time, but somehow life interfered. I was hoping to complete the first mitten by the end of the weekend. I'm not there yet. And the more I look at the mitten, the more I'm thinking that I've done a really bad job with the stranded knitting. No matter how much I spread the stitches, the mitten is puckering. It's on the flower part of the design, so it's tempting to say that it's a three-dimensional design element. And the mitten is going to be too big for my hand. And it doesn't look good enough to give as a gift. I'm going to keep working on it, but I'll only have one mitten completed by the time the Olympic flame is extinguished. There's no way I can knit the second mitten in five days and 15 hours.

Folks, stay tuned, we'll be joined shortly by former Russian knitting gold medalist Ivana Nitamiten.

(Knitting commentary playfully provided by Keith last week as I was relating my knitting woes to him.)