My friend Linda is so akamai!  I was so upset about the sleeve of Nolemana’s sweater, and she offered to give me kokua with it.  So I went over her hale and she took a look at it. She’s really good at math, and she took a look at my sweater.  She checked the directions, and the post-it note where my little “soldiers” were all lined up, marching in orderly fashion down the page.  I had kept good track of things, at least.  So how come the sleeve was all hamajang?

She counted my rows.  She especially looked at my decreases going down the sleeve.  She did some math-kine calculations, then looked at the pattern again.  And she figured it out!

It was a huge “sheesh” for me.  What I’d done was count wrong, and by doing so, effectively made the sleeve shorter by 8″!  Instead of having three rows of regular knitting between decreases, I had only two.  I’d mistakenly counted the first decrease row as Row One.

Linda helped me count back and figure out where the start of the round was; it was kinda hard to determine just where it was, but she did it!

This was more than just a good friend getting me calmed down and helping me figuring out where I’d gone wrong.  Linda spoke encouragement into my life, and let me know that I wasn’t stupid or a failure.  I left her house feeling better than I had in two days, with renewed determination to work on the sweater and filled with gratitude for who she is in my life.

Mahalo nui loa, Linda. You’re the best!