Tipping Point

I've been thinking a lot about that dreaded moment when a knitter knows that all of those beautiful stitches have to be ripped. If you've been reading about my adventures with the Top Down Raglan, you know that I've started over twice. Then I went ahead and jinxed myself by writing "third time is the charm". Very bad! On Friday afternoon, I realized that I was spending equal amounts of time examining the blemishes in my work, as I was knitting. I know that that's my particular tipping point. Off the needles it came. So what, you say. I'll tell you so what! I'm making the 48" bust. There were over 400 stitches on those needles. That's right, nearly twice the number than the sweater that most of you are making. So, here I am with almost 400 new stitches on my needles and I'm not spending any time looking this way and that at real or imagined imperfections. I figure that if this sweater looks awful when it's done, I'm going to impale it on a pike and stick it in the ground outside my window as a reminder. (I've been watching too much Rome on HBO) A reminder of what, you ask?
1. Lose some weight, blubber butt!
2. Don't fool yourself about your tolerance for a mistake when it's close to the beginning.
3. Fix it or rip it before you have 400 stitches
4. Don't make any mistakes that you can't live with, after 400 stitches and 12 inches of knitting.
5. If you can't follow these rules, stop knitting sweaters for yourself. Stick to other stuff or sweaters for teeny tiny bodies, like children and stylishly slender daughters.

All in all, this sweater would be finished by now, if I had followed even one of these rules. Another little irritant is the @#%&*#$ gorgeous yarn! It goes along all lovely, smooth and compact, then explodes into something akin to pencil roving. I'm getting quite good at spit splicing:-[