Tink back the knit

About a million years ago (well, actually only 14, when I first learned to knit), I promised my husband something. At the time, it was a scarf, though in retrospect I think not so much because he had a burning desire for one, but rather because as a novice knitter I was clinging helplessly to all things comfortingly rectilinear. I'm still basically a novice knitter, but age and the intervening years have brought a sort of mellowness that has made me a little more ripe for a challenge (though you will notice that I am still knitting hats in the flat and seaming them up - don't rush me). I've banged out two sprout hats in fairly short order, and when I started discussing plans for a third, and for all these other projects (none of which were the long-awaited scarf), he rather petulantly reminded me that I've yet to make good on that promise. So, flush with my recent hat-ty success, I decided to bump up to an adult size, lose the whimsical stem, and knit my deserving dude a warm, wooly watch cap. (Laurie, if you're reading, this is what might be known in some circles as a toboggan.)

It's a simple k4 p4 rib from cuff to crown, and I got off to a blazing start. Then, one night, I was trying to knit my way through a particularly deafening round of baby meltdown when I noticed it. A few rows back, I knitted a few stitches I should have purled. This is entirely understandable, given that I had a three month-old roaring at aircraft decibels in my ear, but it's really noticeable. Hubby, who lobbied hard for me to overlook the wonkiness of sprout hat #2, again argued for embracing the imperfection and keeping on with the truckin.' He even reminded me of a story I once told him about Persian rugmakers who deliberately sneak a mistake into each piece so as not to be cranking out woven affronts to Allah, who supposedly has cornered the market on perfection. Now that's a beautiful story, and far be it from me to pooh-pooh Persian rugmakers or my mate's well-intentioned cheerleading (and it is his hat, after all), but those few stitches are like an obnoxious wooly interloper giving me the fish eye evey time I see them. And I think that even if I do fix those stitches, my hat will be far enough from perfect to safely avoid being some sort of cosmic insult. So, ignoring cooler heads, I have been tinking the doggone thing back, stitch after godforsaken stitch.

(Visible in this picture is the stem of the glass that holds my gin and tonic, pretty much required for this leg of the project. And for those of you who know I'm nursing and fear for the welfare of my child, I go to La Leche League meetings. I'm way up on the whole breastfeeding thing and a little booze is OK. My daughter will not end up in Betty Ford and it just might keep me from hurting myself or someone else.) Now why, you might ask, don't I pop it off the needles, rip it back, put it back on the needles, and go on my merry way? Well, I have tried taking things off the needles before and had it work, but at the time I was only working with 30 or fewer stitches (remember those cute little sprout hats?). Right now, I'm looking at over 120 - the very thought of trying to put all those back on a needle makes me go more than a little clammy, hence the tinking. I'm trying to think of it as a Zen-like exercise - don't think, just tink. (Hey, whatever gets me through.)