Timeout

When I'm really into a knitting project, sometimes I actually kind of enjoy my insomnia, but more often than not, my early morning knitting often comes back to bite me.  Last Friday morning around 4am, I found myself unable to sleep and happily knitting away on my Oranje sweater.  I finished a section of colorwork that had been taking an extra long time (there were three colors in each row and I'm not so good with juggling a third color).  Excited to have finished that section, I immediately moved onto the short rows for the back of the neck before heading back to bed.  I was happy with my progress but wasn't thrilled with how it looked at this point.  It seemed like a lot of white on the neck and my colorwork in that last section looked terribly sloppy.

With a clearer head the next day, I took a closer look at the pattern.  I quickly realized that I missed the instruction to switch colors when starting the neck short rows.  Ops.  Okay, so there was going to be some ripping.  I continued to study the pattern and noticed that the triangles that I had just finished in a sort of checkerboard pattern according to the pattern chart did not match the triangles on the sample sweater.  The one pictured has striped triangles.  If I had liked how my triangles looked, I wouldn't have cared, but when I looked at them again, I was even more displeased.

They were a complete mess.  The colors were muddled and my tension was all uneven.  Friday night was thus spent ripping back and re-knitting the triangles and neck shaping. 

It was a rockin' Friday night.  Don't you all wish your lives were as exciting as mine? 

I was really happy with the results.  The striped triangles looked much better, and the blue neckband was a big improvement.  On Saturday, I moved onto the next section--a simple checkerboard in the blue and brown.  Easy peasy, I thought to myself, and I knocked out those few rows in no time.  Then I inspected my work.

Gulp. Some of my stitches were HUGE.  A couple of those blue ones are twice the size as the brown stitches.  And some of the brown ones on the bottom row are so big, it looks like I put in a row of eyelets.

Seriously, WTF?  I'm relatively experienced at colorwork, and my tension is usually pretty even, so I'm completely thrown. I'd have no problem ripping back those rows if I had a clue what was going on and knew I could fix it.  When I knit with two colors I hold one color in each hand, so I must be knitting a zillion times more loosely with one hand, or stretching out the stitch I'm knitting into, or something, but which?  And why all of a sudden?  And if I knit it again, will it look the same? 

Having no answers, Oranje is buried back in a bag in timeout.  I don't think I'm going to rip those rows back.  I'm sort of afraid I'll screw up the braid, the uneven stitches really aren't that noticeable, and well, I just don't want to.  But I'm annoyed enough that I'm not ready to continue knitting either.   Maybe in a few days when we've both had a little time away from each other, Oranje and I will get it straightened out.   Just not at 4 am.