Knitting in the Fifth Dimension

I had a student in my first sock-knitting class who said she was a two-dimensional knitter: she followed directions step-by-step, following each instruction in turn until her work was done. That made me realize that I'm a three- or four-dimensional knitter: I like to have a vague sense of how what I'm doing at the moment fits into the whole, of where I'm going and how I expect to get there. It's why I made the rainbow sock, to show where you begin (in white), and the order of the sections you knit as you construct the sock (in spectrum order: red, orange, yellow, etc.).

Last night, I may have broken through into the Fifth Dimension, going back in time to change the future.

As I pondered how to start the sleeves of my sweater, I was troubled by something: I didn't like the ribbing at the bottom. My favorite sweaters don't have ribbing; they have a straight silhouette, much like Brooklyn Tweed's seamless hybrid (and the sweater Matt is working on). I'm too far along to just start over, so I decided to alter the past.

I ran a circular needle through the stitches back down near the ribbing, just above a round of accent color. I then pulled out the accent yarn stitch by stitch, leaving live stitches on the needle at the bottom of my sweater. Now working in the opposite direction, I purled a round, switched to a contrasting color, and began knitting the cuff that I will hem on the inside.

I'm going to be a lot happier with this. And I think the fact that I skipped backwards to change what had already been done just makes the whole thing that much cooler.