February goals 4 and 5--ughh

I am discussing my goals in the order I listed them on Feb 1st, but I really should have these 2 in positions 7 and 8 (yes, the bottom of the list). Not because I do not like the projects, but because they both have "issues".

Goal 4. Continue working on Faroe Cardigan: bottom MUST be done by end of February, including hem: At this point, this is really easy knitting. The pattern is memorized and I can just move right along. BUT...I have been working on 15.5 inches of this pattern and I'm not excited anymore. I think I only have 10 - 20 more rnds (of 276 stitches each) and I will be done knitting this part. And I need to finish sewing up the hem before the end of the month. I will get it done, I will get it done, I will get it done...Here's an old picture (I really do love the sweater):

Goal 5. 2008 resolution: convert "Bird Foot" socks into wrist warmers (need to complete 1 by end of month and cast on the second one). This is a sock gone bad:

Okay, maybe it's not the sock's fault. I started this UFO back in 2006. At the time it was only my second project using stranded knitting. I make gauge swatches of everything except for hats and socks (I make hats as a gauge "swatch" for any sweaters I make). Can you guess where we're going with this? Well, the sock is WAY too tight--even for my daughters. What to do? It really is too pretty to abandon, so I have decided to sit down with the chart and make it into a pair of wrist warmers. I will rip back to where the heel started and make a pretty finish. It really won't be that hard--I just need to sit down and do it.

Knitting topic: Fixing mistakes

It's happened to me more than once: I'm knitting along on a cable or lace project and suddenly I see it. Sometimes it's only a couple of rows down, sometimes it's as many as 10 rows below-- a mistake. Maybe a cable facing the wrong way or just a missing YO, but once I see the mistake, that's all I ever see in that project. At that point I have 3 options:

1. ignore it (if you know me, you know this is not really an option)
2. frog or tink back as many rows as it takes
3. drop just the stitches I need to fix, fix them and carry them back up in pattern.

I was never brave enough for #3 until this past summer when I was knitting MS3 (Swan Lake Stole). I decided to give it a try and now there's no going back. I definitely feel empowered to have this technique in my knitting arsenal.

Here's a great tutorial from Boogie Knits: Click here

If you haven't done it, try it. It's really not as hard as you fear it to be.