Fixing fiascos - again!

With two new KALs starting June 1, I'm sprinting towards the finish line with my Waltham. I've been mindlessly knitting away, watching the final front slowly grow to the armhole bindoff. When I was an inch away from casting off a bunch of armhole stitches and thereby significantly speeding up the knitting, I compared the completed right front with the in-process left one. ACKKKK! I discovered that I'd done an extra twist on the very first cable after the cast-on.

Just go ahead and shoot me. :-(

I'm becoming quite the queen of fixing fiascos, at least from a knitting perspective. You may remember that I performed extensive sweater surgery to resize and redeem the garment I made the beloved boyfriend for Christmas. Disaster-struck again, I whipped out my scalpel and went back to the operating room.

I started by running a life line. I selected the row beneath what would now be the first cable twist.  I threaded a bent-tip tapestry needle with contrasting red yarn and painstakingly picked up the left leg of every stitch. Then I used a long circular needle to thread all the life line stitches onto the needle.

Then came the scary part. Using a pair of sharp scissors, I cut off the initial cast-on row and carefully pulled out the extraneous cut-up yarn up to the needle. I ensured that every single stitch was on the needle and then pulled out the life line. Finally, I joined an extra skein and bound off the row. Cable removed, no stitches dropped, fiasco averted!

I'm getting to be quite the sweater surgeon. But what I really  need is to knit the damn thing correctly to begin with! My goals: pay better attention, check my work regularly, use stitch markers and row counters, and stop knitting so late into the night when I'm completely exhausted and tend to screw up my knitting. But it is nice to know that I can get myself out of trouble when necessary.