Finishing the baby blanket--two mistakes and two lessons

Here it is, the finished baby blanket. I am really happy with it in most respects. The texture is baby-friendly and cushy, the colors bright and nontraditional (for a newborn anyway), and the size perfect for anyone just born to about age 4 (after that, perhaps as a cape?).

Now for the last 1/6 of the blanket's travails: I was at the Knit in Public Day getting going on the last skein of my Karaoke yarn, when the yarn switched from variegated over inches or feet and became two strands of vastly different colors, almost like a candy cane effect, only with different colors. It was totally wrong, and yet it took me a few rows of this to convince me that I wasn't going to be able to use it (Egypt and de land of de Nile, etc.). But ta-da! I was with more experienced knitters, and ta-da! I was near the yarn store I'd bought the Karaoke from. So . . . I had help frogging the bad yarn out, and reorienting my needles in the stitches (now I know how!), and a kindly yarn merchant who offered to replace the skein with another and return the defective yarn to Karaoke for replacement. Wheeeew. Lesson 1 learned. I'd need this new info again very soon because . . .

Then I went home, bravely began again on the last section, but about 12 rows into it, I realized that a glass of wine and knitting are not always a wise combination. I had dropped a stitch in two places. So I tried catching the stitches and corrected it (great, right?), but it just looked tight and wrong, and then I counted my stitches total. Also wrong, too many. Now I might have pulled out clumps of hair and worked on my primal scream. But it was, as Jimmy Buffet once said, "my own damn fault."

So with the new working knowledge of frogging and reorienting stitches correctly, and courage left over from the wine, :^), I tore out about twelve rows and started again.

I finished it without incident, finished off the threads and joins etc., de-cat-haired it, and took a few pix. Now to wrap it up festively and mail it to the boss with the new baby boy. I hope they will love it, and that it not being machine washable will not be a detraction.

The other thing I learned from a mistake (why are mistakes so much more instructive than warnings???) is that variegated yarn such as this needs to be knitted with an eye toward some evenness of the striping. I don't know why I didn't see the huge blue stripe when I knitted it, wider than all the others by far. Ah well. I have successfully knitted my errors into it, so I won't offend Allah, and now the baby will have that much more protection.

I am so good at this sort of skating!