Nightmare

On Friday evening I settled myself down on my favorite spot on the couch near the bright lamp. I had successfully negotiated gusset increases under the arms and I was ready to tackle the next step in Rick's sweater: dividing for the front and back.
This required me to get out the charts again and write myself new notes. I had printed round-by-round instructions on a sheet of paper for myself because I find keeping my place in charts much more difficult. Now I needed to write up some more instructions for back and forth rows because of the dividing for front and back of the sweater.

I got out the charts again and for a moment I thought I had read something wrong. Then all at once I realized I did read something wrong, back in May!!! I wanted to scream. Then I wanted to cry. Then I get really angry. Then I decided to ask Rick if he could wait until closer to Christmas to receive his new sweater. He had a good answer.
I told him how I had made an error. A BIG one. How big? Let's say all those purl stitches I put in the cable patterns were supposed to be knit stitches. I thought, "Well, I've come this far, there is no way I could start over now. I've invested too much. I've been working on this since May!" I continued with putting the gusset stitches on holders and the front of sweater stitches on a large holder and resolved to continue the sweater the was I had made it this far. So it was, off and knitting again when snap! This happened. Naturally, this is my only pair of US7 straight needles. Of course it broke in two places so about 30 stitches fell off the needle along with an untold number of stitch markers.
Now I scoff at the naive thinking I had when when I wrote this post. I thought it was hard to start over last time! Ha! This time I was almost half done with the garment. I was living a knitting tragedy.
What can one do in these circumstances? I took a deep breath and began rolling yarn. After the first ball was rolled I was feeling mighty sorry for myself and yearning for some of Isabella's medicinal tonic. But I had not the foresight to prepare any. There was lots of rolling yet to do. And of course I had woven in all the joins as I went along, so the process was especially tedious and painful. Shortly after I began winding he second ball I found a way to supplement my resolve. (Thanks for the gift, Gene. It came in really handy Friday night!) By the time I had rolled all seven of these balls I was tired enough to go to sleep. Saturday morning I bought a nice bamboo set of US 7 needles. I also got some more cotton yarn so I can make another dish towel while the emotional wounds from this sweater tragedy are still healing.
Today it is Monday morning and I'm ready to give the sweater another go. It still amazes me that this sweater, the one that comes with the warning about the cable set-ups being very tricky, got the best of me. And not because of the cables -- those I did correctly. But because I mixed up knit and purl.