More Toe-Up Love and Dealbreakers

The third time has been the charm with the toe-up experience. The two-part class ended on Tuesday and it was so much fun. Our instructor Cynthia from Stitch Your Art Out near State College (one of our many fine LYSs in Central PA) has so much patience and did an excellent job of hooking us up with the new technique. Because I was late I ran out the door and distractedly grabbed a ball of yarn from my stash. I thought that it was some Claudia's Hand Painted that I had purchased at her store many months ago, but when I got home I realized that instead it was some Sundara (oops, sorry Cynthia! I didn't mean to be the jackass that brings outside yarn to the class). As you can see it is heavenly and pure perfection...


In any relationship there are points of contention that are so strong that they indeed become insurmountable and as such constitute dealbreakers. Luckily for my husband none of my charming traits like buying really expensive French shampoo and then throwing the not-even half used bottle out several months later to make room for more French shampoo isn't a dealbreaker. Likewise for me his strong need to dig through the trash in an effort to bust me and castigate me for my profligate ways isn't one either. (I think it's kind of cute, actually.) But were I to discover for example that he secretly thought all gay people were going to hell or that he actually preferred Miracle Whip to real mayonnaise...well, that my friends would be the end of the line.
It occurs to me that the concept is applicable to that other major relationship in my life, knitting. (Of course with your own kids there is no such thing as a dealbreaker--you're in it come hell or high water, right?). With certain projects that are some mistakes that are 'fudgeable' as Cynthia the toe-up sock guru says, meaning that if you find yourself a bit off, you pick up a stitch and move one. Not a big deal. Please, it's the bottom of the heel, and they're just socks for Chrissakes...And then there are errors that are annoying enough that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can't live with them. You must rip them/fix them/make them go away asap. Not remedying them is not even a thinkable thought. They are dealbreakers. However the problem here is one of adjudication-- knowing in the heat of the moment which it's going to be is the real issue.


Thursday afternoon I cast on for the Katharine Hepburn cardigan from Lace Style. I've been wanting to try my hand at this for months as I am a cable fiend and strongly attracted to the chic retro style of the pattern. I have also been itching to use some recently acquired Louet Gems. Casting on took f-o-r-e-v-e-r (counting over and over made me feel like a character in a Beckett play) and let's not even talk about the set-up row. When I finally got beyond the first cable row (3 hours later as I had to pause for cocktails, a lengthy phone conversation with my brother in which we discussed how much we were looking forward to Paris Hilton going to jail, cobbling together a dinner which involved copious amounts of frozen vegetables, and wielding the threat of no television for the foreseeable future unless the kiddie-winkies practiced their various instruments), I realized that I had done a left-twist cable on the second half of the back. Stinkbaskets! Yes I was supremely annoyed, but I knew with absolute certainty that there was NO WAY I was ripping back to fix the problem. This was most definitely not a dealbreaker. Now if I were to discover that my gauge were massively off, or that there were fundamental errors in the entire pattern, it would be another story entirely. But as it turns out, the five misbegotten cables are no big deal to this slacker knitter. But I am sure that for many of you persnickety types, this would be an untenable situation. That's cool, no judgement (hehe)... I am wondering what constitutes a dealbreaker for you? How do you know when to say when? What can you live with, and what can't you stand?