Curse-ed

So, I normally don't buy into the whole "Friday the 13th" bit, I'm not afraid of scary movies (I may jump, but I'm not afraid the boogey man is going to get me on my way out the car afterwards), but last night...

I started the left front of the "Peapod" and got past the 3" of ribbing for the bottom edge. And so I begin the patterned part. And that's when it all went wrong. I knit, and ripped, up to row 10 FOUR times. I don't even know exactly what the heck was going on, the cabling part was just not working out. And I was following the pattern - as it was written. So after the 4th frog, it was 11pm and I decided that I needed to put it down and go to bed. And I laid there obsessing, trying to figure out what was going wrong.

This morning, I tried to find out if there were any known errors and therefore, corrections via the web. And of course, the book isn't listed anywhere except on sites that you can buy it from and has glowing reviews, but that's it. And if you search "Peapod" the results you get are for the very popular baby Peapod sweater. And the few blogs I found whose writers were making the cardigan had gotten through the right front and had not moved on the left because the directions aren't written out - you have to reverse them on your own. Can we say FRUSTRATION?! So amongst all this searching, I decided that I would sign up for Ravelry (which everyone has been talking about, and I figured that I would just wait until it was fully up and running, or eventually when I got around to it). But the level of frustration changed my mind.

So then I broke down. I pulled out my "Cables Untangled" book (which is wonderful by the way) and I charted. I have never charted before, I've never even attempted a pattern by reading a pattern. So I worked out the chart for the right front and then the left according to the book's directions, and they didn't match. So I then charted the left from the right chart, and miracle of miracles it all started to work. So... was the knitting a bit cursed last night? Don't know, couldn't tell you, but dang it, it definitely wasn't going well.

I pulled myself away from the Peapod in order to go out to a festival with friends. Luckily, I ran into only 1 of my student athletes - which is amazing, because half of them are from that parish. I was really hoping that I wouldn't see any of them, I still have two weeks before I have to see them again - and I hadn't thought about the fact that I ran a chance of seeing them before I agreed to go. Live and learn. I think it's lucky that we left early - due to Kaylee's bedtime, I'm sure that's the reason I missed out.