A interesting thing happened on the way to dinner.

I was picking up my friend Cynthia to go out to dinner.  She had asked, since I was picking her up, if I would mind looking at a shawl she was working on. 

The pattern wasn't just any old pattern.  It was Not Just Plain Jane's Renaissance Shawl.  Remember, beware of the green paper?  She went back to the project after a hiatus.

I sat down with the shawl and got my bearings.  Cynthia showed me where the problem was and what stitch was the culprit. I read stitches for the row and compared a lace repeat that was correct with the repeat that went awry.

Here's what we knew:
Repeat 1 - correct.
Repeat 2 - stitch count is off and a sk2togp (slip 1 st, knit two stitches together, pass slipped stitch over) had jumped ship.
Repeat 3 - wasn't starting out with the right stitch.

 

I backed out of the stitches in the offending repeat.  As I did so, something happened that I have NEVER seen before.  Look closely at the picture above!  There were two live loops, one above the other, part of the same vertical row! That totally caught us up short. Cynthia quickly pinned them together to keep them from unraveling.

 With the loops safely secured, we took stock.  We were 2 stitches short in the repeat.  We had to reintroduce a sk2togp to make it right. The loop on the bottom was the k2tog portion of the dropped sk2togp.  I pulled up yarnovers out of the slack you see above on either side of the k2tog and redid the sk2togp. 

Wow! We exhaled, counted the stitches, and all was right with the shawl. It was a total "high five" moment.

As we drove to dinner, we did the post game wrap up. We were trying to figure out how it happened.  It was like we were detectives on a case and playing out different scenarios.  Yeah, I know, corny.  It was fun though and interesting to unravel the situation (pun intended, too perfect to ignore).

So here's the tip: When you have a mistake that seems really puzzling, walk away.  It's always better to approach it with fresh eyes after a break.  It's even better if you have a good knitting buddy who can look it over as well.  She/he will have an easier time being objective.   Stay calm and have safety pins or locking stitch markers as you slowly work over your problem.