Yarn assaulted in suburban Detroit home. Police say the perp has four legs and a big nose.

Be on the lookout for this four legged beast with the long reach. Please notify the Knitting Police if you see him anywhere near yarn. Do not try to apprehend him yourself, unless you happen to have a cup of Frosty Paws handy. His attention can be diverted for a long time with one of those.

I'm behind on the heavy Icelandic sweater. When temps topped 100 degrees this week, knitting with bulky wool became a challenge. In desperation to knit anything, I set the heavy sweater aside and cast on a light weight project using hand dyed sock yarn, then proceeded to knit away in garter stitch. A couple of hours into knitting this wee little project, a certain big nosed beast slapped his paw down on my neatly wound cake of yarn. I was using a center pull, but somehow, the beast managed to snag his claw into several loops of yarn on the side, causing an avalanche of yarn that promptly got all tangled into a mess. This tragedy occurred in a split second. While trying to rewrap the yarn, which I ultimately had to cut and pitch, several stitches fell off my needle. I rescued all of them, except one, which, freed of its confining loops, found its way down the row.

Now to me, while simple to knit, and gorgeous in the right garment, garter stitch is a pain in the behind to repair if you drop a stitch. Thanks to youtube though, I have acquired the perfect way to repair dropped garter stitches and added this skill to my repertoire. Whatever did I do before youtube and google? I'll admit that prior to this, I may have ripped things back to the beginning, but likely not until I'd wasted an hour trying to fix it and cursing like a sailor. Learning to repair a dropped stitch or mistakes makes knitting so much more enjoyable. If I had ripped this out, I don't think I would have cast back on.

Prior to seeing this one video, in particular, I used to fix dropped garter stitches like this by turning the work back and forth and carrying the dropped stitch up like stockinette. It worked, but was complicated and fussy. As busy as I've been lately, I'm all over doing things the easy way. What made using my method difficult for this dropped stitch, which was now eighteen rows down and near the cast on edge, was the fact that it's multicolored fingering weight yarn. Yikes. My poor eyeballs were straining to see straight with such tiny stitches on US size 2 needles.

Can you spot the repair? Me neither.

I have to say, I love the brain trust out there in Knitting Land and thank all of those knitters who produce and publish such wonderful teaching videos. Where would I be with out you? Likely the Knitting Loony Bin, or at the least, reknitting nearly 3,000 stitches...Same difference. In particular, I'm sending out a great big thanks to MarleneD1216 (her youtube ID). Today you are my hero and the beast's salvation.