Frog with a silver lining

Firstly, I'm giving myself a pat on the back for learning something new - I figured out how to replace that boring title banner of mine with a real photo that I took myself. Those are the geese that live in the pond by my house.

Next: weekend update. We ended up going to London to our parents. The boys were so excited to see their Grandma, and she was saving something for them - Christmas presents! A whole load of them! My 4 year old had been asking me all week, "Is it Christmas yet?" And I said, "not for awhile", yet when we arrived at Grandma's house she had tons of gifts wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper! She got a good laugh out of that. We had such a nice visit, and relaxed. I got to finish my "heart in hearts' dishcloth, but gave it away to my dad before I took a photo. He said, "not bad, only one flaw" and pointed out the flaw I hadn't noticed. I I had slipped a stitch, picked it up, but ended up increasing in the middle of the row. Oh well.

On to the title of the blog for today: Frog with a silver lining...
I've been working on a Mug for my partner in the Spring Fling Coffee Swap. I thought I would try it with cotton yarn in spring colors, although the pattern calls for wool like Cascade. I figured it would be ok to use cotton. This was also my first time knitting in the round; I got to use double pointed needles as well as a 'magic loop' for knitting in the round. The sides are worked flat with circular needles. I thought I was doing fairly well until I noticed that it looks like it's getting wider as I go. I have to admit; I didn't do a swatch. And my circ needles are one size larger than my dpns, which explains why the side stitches are larger than the ones on the bottom that were done in the round. That completely sucks. So I may have to frog the whole thing. A friend of mine says I should just get a larger mug for it. I'm thinking I may finish it just to get some more practise on this smocking technique, but I will make a new one for my swap pal with Cascade yarn. So that's the 'frog' part; to frog or not to frog? The silver lining part is that I got to learn something new on my knitting: I noticed one ribbing looked very stretchy, as if there was something missing. Then I turned it around and almost screamed! I dropped a stitch! I was about 3 or 4 rows back! Eeeek! What to do, what to do! This was my first time dropping a stitch like this, although I hoped I would be the one it never happened to, but now I can join the club. It was a purl stitch on the ribbing and I couldn't help but notice it looked like a crochet loop hanging there... so I grabbed the smallest crochet hook in my bag and found I could gently pull it through the other stitches loop by loop until it was all caught up. I am so pleased with myself for having solved this one all on my own! What an accomplishment. Are you laughing at me? I had to share this with you all. I picked up a stitch! Yay!