ONE STITCH TOO MANY

     Where did that stitch come from?

    It was one stitch too many.

    I used to laugh at the young woman in the first of Debbie Macomber's series of books centered on The Shop on Blossom Street. Her first knitting project was a scarf -- she kept finishing every row with the wrong number of stitches.

    A Baby Surprise Jacket, from Elizabeth Zimmerman's pattern, is an exercise in counting. At least for me. I have knit Baby Surprise Jackets before, but cannot now remember the details. You knit and knit and knit and finally achieve a relatively flat, oddly shaped piece of knitting. Then you sew two sections together to make the sleeves, and abracadabra, you have a baby sweater.

    But you have to keep counting the stitches. If you do not have the correct number of stitches, you have to froggit (I think that's the word, I should research it some time), back track until you have unknit back to a place where the count is correct. I've done a lot of unknitting on this project.