rebound...

The way I see it, there are three options here.
1.  Throw the whole thing out (not likely, too expensive and I do like to prove a point).
2. Unravel the Back and Front and reknit (only if all else fails).
3. Attempt to fix the mistake (here’s what separates the men from the boys -yeah, I know that’s old-fashioned and sexist but look at those swears in the last post!).
Do not unravel the last row and then expect to be able to rehang the stitches. Did I mention this is black, quite fine yarn and very small stitches?

rehang and undo st by st

Here’s what I’d do (this ain’t my first rodeo!). Wait till you are calm, cool and collected, fresh, all alcohol has left your system, with good light. Note, with WCD or any natural fibre yarn, I always steam/press each piece and examine it before getting to this stage, so, the final rows are set and unlikely to unravel quickly unless severely provoked.


separate the 2 pieces

So, sitting at the machine, carefully, one stitch at a time, from the left (because I chained off right to left so the final stitch is at the left) unravel the last row, rehanging the one chained stitch. Pulling the correct yarn tail, unravel that stitch. There are two sts on the needle. Pick up the two sts, move them to the needle at the right which will allow you to grab the front stitch and move it back to the needle at the left. Repeat across the row until you now have the row of where you knit the one set through the other to make the seam.
Now is the tricky part. Pull the needles and the work out slightly. Put your left hand between the two layers from the left, separating them and lifting slightly up on the front piece. With the one-prong tool, from the right, guide that back stitch (it is in front, below the hook of the needle, knitting the two together) up and back into the hook of the needle. Complete across till you have two sts on every needle, separated.

remove front piece on garter bar

This next part should be relatively easy. Bring the needles fully out, both sets behind the latches. Take the small piece of the garter bar and pull off the front piece onto the bar and set aside. You’re left with the Back shoulder, hanging with the knit side facing. Find the other/correct Front and hang it, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you don’t have a garter bar, I suppose you could resort to a fine handknitting needle….
Whadya know? the piece on the garter bar is the correct way to just rehang onto the needles after hanging the other back shoulder, knit side facing! Life is good!

re-boot...

After making the two different pockets, I decided I did like the ‘willow’ colour on the Left but maybe with the stripe proportions of the Right Front. I hate unravelling and I wanted to save the top portion to look at again and compare but don’t need to save the yarn to re-use. The stripes do make it easier to know just where you are. I wanted to take it back to just below where I joined in the ‘café’ brown colour – you may have noticed the width of my stripes at this point were somewhat based on the underarm shaping – I wanted to be able to shortrow it all in one go…

Back to the taking apart. I knew I had 10 more rows of the olive here than on the other pieces before starting the café and just to be sure, I counted them using long pins to mark each 10 rows to find the 70th row of olive. I then snipped the thread of the first row of café at the centre side, knowing I had the tail of that row on the other side. Pulling a little at a time from the tail side, snipping as you need and pulling back on the puckers to get the new end, draw  out the entire row. Note, I had steamed/pressed this well, so the stitches aren’t going anywhere.

Now there are 10 rows of olive left. I unravel 8 rows so there are 2 to play with. Take it to the machine and rehang the main bed stitches, picking up the row below – it’s easier than trying to poke the tool into the actual loops of the last row. Then, pull out that unhung row. Add some claw weights and put the fabric between the beds. Bring up the rib bed and position it to the one notch lower than fully engaged to allow some room to manoeuvre. Hang the longstitch band working gently and one stitch at a time. There is one row left to unravel – pull it out, ensure there are no split stitches from the rehang, ready to proceed with new plan!

i was in denial...

rehung!

I didn't really look closely at the second front - I was on a roll, knitting pieces like no one’s business, hand stitching the cuffs and bands, joining pieces and admiring my progress! Right down to the end, collar and hood are on, all pieces seamed, ends darned in and then, funny, it seemed that one front was longer than the other. Maybe I was too enthusiastic when I pressed it? In my haste to get this done and be able to order the zipper (yes, even though I do have 2 light blue options, I’m not completely happy with either even if the length is right) - I made the chained edging for the shorter side and completely ignoring the fact that the other front edge appears to be a good 5 cm/2 inches longer. (On that last blogpost photo, I bodged the pieces and hid the longer front under the cast-on edge of the hood – who was I kidding? like you knew?) I even attempted to hang that side on the same needles, hoping to 'ease' in the excess but had to abort! It just wasn’t going to work. So, still with the utmost confidence, I figured I'd wash it and that would fix the obvious problem - I must have stretched it in my original pressing when it came off the machine.

good to go!

Nope, that didn't work! Facing the fact that I must have followed the Back instructions instead of the Front, I now, very calmly with no swears, began picking out the seam between the sleeve/shoulder, hoping against all odds that I could salvage this operation...OMG! It worked. With the undoing of that single seam, I was able to unravel the left front back down to the start of the underarm  - I know how many stitches and what row I should be on -  a piece of cake!
 Fake it till you make it!