Timing is everything!

I was asked to come in today to help a lady with her baby blanket.  She had been going along her merry way and had increases on the second to last green section.  Barbara S (not the Barbara I made squares for) tried to help her.  She refused to rip it back to the increase.  Barbara started cutting each row and pulled the crochet back to where it looked mostly even, and then wove the end in.  She only had a few minutes to help this lady, so the lady asked to come back.

Well, Barbara didn't want to continue helping this person if she could help it, so she asked me.  I told her I would, though I was very, very nervous about it.

I went in today hoping I would be able to pull this off.  It also helped that Barbara was working, so if I really needed to I could go running to her in a cold sweat.  I was getting both excited and disappointed as half an hr went by and the lady with the baby blanket didn't show-up.  I was about to go make sure Barbara told her 2pm when she finally got there.  Turns out she had a doctor's appointment that went long.

I looked at the blanket and had a mental freak-out.  The thing was in a shell stitch and I couldn't even really tell where I would have to stop pulling back on each row to make it even and not decrease.  I then causally asked her why she hadn't just ripped it back and re-done that part.  She asked if I thought that would look better.  I told her that it would since the other side was so well done and straight.  She agreed to rip it out!

I ripped out the bit of green section she had started.  I pulled out the multi-colored section.  Then there was only half of the green to go.  To make sure she didn't have any odd bits of yarn sitting around, I took it back to the first row that had been cut.  She thanked me for my help a million times.  She also asked what she owed me for my help.  I told her nothing, but when she didn't seem to think that was fair, I told her that she had to bring the finished baby blanket in for me to see.  She was happy with that.  She also tried to describe how to do the shell stitch she was doing.

The shell is a *2dc, c2, dc* in each chain section of the row below.  It is very cute and snugs together better than most other shell patterns I've seen.

I was talking to Barbara about it after the lady had left.  Barbara was glad that I managed to talk her into ripping and redoing, and she was also glad that when I looked at it, I had no idea how to fix it other than ripping.  I then found out that the lady might have changed her mind about the ripping because it is no longer for a grand-child, but is now going to be for a grand-niece.  Extended deadlines are always nice.

Another thing that happened was that after my internal freak out I thought that the pattern looked familiar.  Like someone in one of my classes had brought something like that in for me to help them figure out how to do the stitch pattern.  Then after we got back through the multi-section I realized that it didn't look similar, it looked the same.  It looked the same because it was the same blanket I helped her with before!  It was at least half a year ago!  It was nice to see it again.

I was going to finish this post of my holiday scarf near things again, and a picture of the color work part of the serape, but the card reader on the front of my computer doesn't seem to want to notice the card when I put it in. It worked before!

Looks like you will just have to imagine.