GG Wisdom

"When in doubt, rip it out."

I know lots of knitters say this.  In the beginning of my knitting journey, she used to tell me "Never be afraid to rip it out. If you see a mistake that you can't live with, you will see it every time you look at your knitting." 

I ignored her a couple of times. - yes I was a brave young girl ignoring her advise.-  I was sorry that I did.  No one else saw the "mistake" that I had made, but I did.  Sometimes I was silly enough to even point it out to people, so they saw it.  

Another time I thought I was following a pattern wrong.  I just kept knitting, ignoring the advise.  I ended up with a sweater with sleeves so long a monkey could have worn it.

Each time I loose count, find I have the wrong number of stitches, drop a stitch, or loose a stitch marker and really mess it up...I hear GG's voice.  Don't get me wrong, she was great at teaching me how to "fix" some of these problems, and some times I do...but when in doubt, I rip it out.

I have a story from GG about when she was in the hospital several years ago.

She had her knitting with her (that goes without saying I guess), and all of the nurses would ask her about what she was knitting.  Some of them had knitting of their own that they brought in to show her.  One nurse was having a terrible time with a project that had over 100 stitches.  She was new to knitting and didn't know what she was doing.  She kept getting the wrong number of stitches.  GG said she looked at it and quickly determined that it was hopeless to "fix" back more than 3 or 4 rows.  She said the entire project was not wrong, but the last part needed to come out.  So, without telling this nurse what she was going to do, she stated "when in doubt, rip it out" and took it off the needles.  She said the nurse gasped and put her hands to her face.  GG told her not to worry and explained as she was ripping out the rows.  The nurse kept repeating, "How will you get it back on the needles? I'm going to have to start all over."  GG calmly told her to watch.  (I have been in this poor woman's shoes and know how she felt, but you are there only once as GG works her magic).  She then picked up the stitches with the ease and careful detail we all know.  She then showed this nurse what to do.  The next day everyone had heard about it, and the nurse was happily showing off her project that was back on track.  GG was now the hero.  She would laugh as she described the nurses face as she "popped those stitches right off the needle."  But in the end, everyone understood that GG knew what she was doing.