I need help!!!!

Has anything like this ever happened to you? You’re traveling on vacation, cruising down the road, joyfully knitting away on your lace shawl project that you saved to knit on your trip when suddenly you realize your stitch count is off. You count and recount your stitches and sure enough you’re one stitch short. Great, now what? You examine your work and try as you might you simply cannot find the missing stitch. OK, you take a breath. Then ever so carefully you pick back a few rows, stitch by stitch, to see if the missing stitch miraculously reappears. After counting your stitches again, you discover you’re not off by one stitch, now there are two stitches that have gone missing. With all this down time on your vacation you really really want to finish your project, and now you’re at a complete standstill. Time to consider your options. Option 1: Get frustrated and angry and stuff the whole mess in a bag and vow to quit knitting forever. Not really an option. “I knit therefore I am”, right?

Option 2: Rip the whole piece out and start over from the very beginning. A drastic measure and a terrible option. At this point, anyway. Maybe you need a “professional” opinion.

Option 3: Turn to an old friend – Google to the rescue. You’re only a few miles from a yarn shop! Perfect.

Sounds like option 3 is a great place to start, and maybe you’ll get that professional opinion.

A few minutes later you arrive at the shop, and as you walk through the door with fingers crossed, you say a prayer that help is near. With my yarn shop owner hat on, let me share my thoughts on how you might best make your approach. I’m far more receptive and eager to help when the knitter says something like “I’m on the road and I know I didn’t buy the yarn from you, but I could really use some help. Do you have a little time to get me back on track?” I really appreciate it when a knitter speaks to me honestly and respectfully about whatever the problem is. You’d be surprised how many times this is not the case. It automatically puts me in the mood to want to help.

Let me say that I will ALWAYS do my best to help any knitter in this situation. After all, I’ve been in those shoes myself. A few more words of advice. Be patient if the shop is busy. If you’ve come at a busy time, be prepared to wait a bit until a moment presents itself. Maybe a friendly knitter at “the table” will offer to help while you’re waiting. That’s how we knitters are. Hopefully, in either case, the problem requires a fairly straightforward fix, but brace yourself in case you hear the dreaded words you so hoped you wouldn’t. “You need to rip it out.”

If it is salvageable and seems to be a complicated fix, offer to pay. Keep in mind that what looks to be an easy job for your knitting angel, likely took years of knitting experience to achieve your repair with such ease and skill. Personally I don’t charge for helping a knitter in need in a situation like this, but I do understand if some shop owners would. And in my opinion that’s ok. After all, a yarn shop is a business, not a nonprofit organization. Something else to keep in mind, if payment is offered and declined, a nice form of “payment” regardless of the nature of the knitting problem, might be making a small purchase like a package of ring markers or darning needles. You can never have enough and it’s a nice gesture. A small price to pay to be back on track with your shawl. Remember the state of your knitting when you walked in the shop. Hopefully you never heard those words of defeat and are now back on the road, with needles clicking happily away.

p.s I LOVE the Beatles:)

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