I'm still working (off and on) on the test-knitting project for TChem. I think I'm a bit better than 1/4 way done with the total. (There are two halves, and I am about halfway through the first half).

A couple of disjointed thoughts on lace-knitting with "true" laceweight yarn:

Un-knitting when you make a mistake is NOT fun. It's worse than un-knitting any other yarn, with the possible exception of one of those hairy yarns (like Kid Silk or Paton's Divine). Undoing ssk is the worst.

"House" does not make good lace-knitting accompaniment; I found myself wanting to look at the screen too much. (And NOT just to look at Hugh Laurie and Jesse Spencer, either - it's one of those shows where not all the detail is in the dialogue). So it slowed down my knitting last night.

(Incidentally - I like the theory that there is sort of a Sherlock Holmes link....House/Holmes; House plays the piano (and electric guitar) and Holmes played the violin; House is addicted to Vicodin (well, the level of dependence is unclear - whether it's mostly a psychological addiction or a physical need, just to be out of pain) and Holmes had morphine. And then there's the sidekick: Dr. Wilson/Dr. Watson. And the whole solving-of-mysteries-by-picking-up-on-small-things-other-people-miss.

And in one of the Season 2 episodes I watched recently, Wilson and House are standing outside House's house and there's a big "221B" plaque right next to the front door.

I enjoy it when the people who make shows put those little things in there to reward the people who pay attention.)

At any rate. I made a minor mistake (I think) on one of the "squares" in Column 4 (that will make sense to TChem and me, not any of you other lot). I didn't discover it until 2 rows later (the next pattern row). So I debated: do I fudge it, or do I un-knit. (Ripping back was not an option; I hadn't run a life-line and didn't really want to mess with putting one in already-done knitting).

So I fudged it. And was nervous for the next few rows to see how it would "mutate" the pattern.

The pattern is not off-line, nor is the error (if it was such - it may have been merely that I failed to do a necessary decrease which is easily enough corrected) particularly noticeable.

So I decided it was a neutral mutation and went on.

And it occurs to me - some knitters talk about "bugs" vs. "features" (where a "bug" is a bad mistake and a "feature" is something you can explain away as "I meant to do that") but I prefer the concept of mutations, where there can be neutral, beneficial, or deleterious mutations.

(And I suppose just like "real" mutations, the effect of mutations-in-knitting can depend on where they happen and what type of "habitat" (garment) they are in.)

Neutral mutations would be one that didn't affect the pattern...that didn't alter the wearability of the garment or, in the case of lace, didn't get the pattern off-step. (That's a big problem in lace knitting - sometimes the simple correction to a mistake will get things off-count and then the pattern gets frameshifted, to use another genetics term).

A beneficial mutation would be something that you like better or that works better than what was written in the pattern. I can't think of something right off the top of my head that would be that way (and I know none of the errors I've made would count as a beneficial mutation), but something like, I don't know, doing the armhole decreases "wrong" as per the pattern and finding that the armscye and sleeve fit better would be an example.

And of course, a deleterious mutation would screw things up. Like an unintentionally dropped stitch that ladders down and makes a big ugly run, or a case where lace gets hopelessly off-step (and you can't pass the project off as "Deconstructionist Lace" or some such thing). Deleterious mutations would be the situation where you'd either have to rip back to the mistake and repair (Um, like DNA ligase might in a cell?) or where you just trash the whole project (in other words, an evolutionarily non-viable individual).

(I suppose you could make the argument that intentionally altering patterns would be akin to Intelligent Design, but I'm not goin' there.)