Big Fish Story or why you can never have too many needles

The last update on the fish blanket/afghan was that the # of stitches picked up along the edge of one panel was way off from the live stitch count of the other panel it was to be grafted to.

Live stitches were living on a 32" circular and I was guess-timating that the final panel was at least close to the same length as the others.

Two things that changed my world view on this one.

I finally pulled the picked up stitches out of the final panel. In the process I discovered that one of the segments of the panel had had some stitch failures along the selvedge edge.

So, I decided to frog it and take the grafting out so I could reknit and regraft.

Since I was already going to undertake this effort, I decided that it probably would be a good idea for me get a real sanity check about why the stitch counts on the two sides were so off.

To that end, I carefully transferred the live stitches onto a length of heavy gauge fishing line (great stuff for blocking btw) and, sure enough, the final panel with the problematic picked up stitches is at least four inches longer than the other panel. That pretty much explains the problem.

So, while I may be picking up stitches soon and grafting the last panel into place, first there's a bit of frogging and reknitting that has to happen first.