angel top in progress

This is the pattern of the lace angel top I'm knitting for Baby. The bottom one. The term 'angel top' is not common here in the US, but it seems fairly well-used in New Zealand. It could be a British thing. As far as I can tell, angel tops have the shape of an a-line dress, but they're just to the waist, like a sweater. Like I mentioned in a previous post, New Zealand (and most likely Australia and the UK and maybe other countries) have a type of yarn called 'baby wool' and I'm using a lovely lavender baby wool for this project.

It's been awhile since I knit lace, and I'm really enjoying it, though my hands are starting to cramp up and get sore from the fine detail. The lace pattern is easy, but I still managed to mess it up at one point. I accidentally added a few stitches as the end of a right side row, and didn't realize until I had purled a row, and then knit another whole right side lace row. I don't know how I managed to screw it up so bad. Normally when I make mistakes I un-knit to get back to the problem area. I don't knit with any kind of life line. And even when I'm knitting just stocking stitch I won't ever pull out the needle, rip out the knitting to past the mistake and put the stitches back on the needles. I always un-knit. Meaning I go backwards through each stitch individually to take it off and put the lower stitch back on the left needle. A waste of time I'm sure, but it stems from the days when I was a novice knitter and didn't trust that I'd be able to figure out how the stitches went back on the needle.

My method of going back to mistakes causes a big problem when I've knit past the mistake so far. Especially on lace, with 103 stitches per row. I debated for several minutes whether or not to go back. I've read several places that if you catch a mistake, always go back to fix it, or else you'll always wish you had, and that every time you look at the finished piece you'll regret not fixing it when you had the chance. What would you do?

Well, I decided not to go back and fix it. I k2tog a few times to get the stitch count right, and I just kept on going. And actually, as I look back at the mistake area, I'm really really happy I didn't go back to fix it. First off, since it's right at the edge, it will most likely disappear once I seam the finished pieces together. Secondly, I could easily have made MORE mistakes, more glaring errors, had I tried to take out two whole rows. And then of course there's the theory that every hand knit piece NEEDS a mistake or two, to make it unique. Otherwise you might as well buy the sweater from the store.

So here it is so far, in all its imperfect glory. Knit on a long circular, so very difficult to straighten out for a photo, even with the help of my 3 year old.