Oh...shoot!

     The stitch pattern for Dorothy has an interesting (and sometimes annoying) feature.  The stitch pattern I used is mostly patterned on the right side, but every 12 rows there are decreases on the wrong side.   This feature makes for a slow going, as it's hard to get the rhythm of the pattern.  I found myself forgetting about those purled decreases more often than not.

     Here's a solution I came up with to avoid tinking back every time I forgot the darn decreases.  You're happily knitting along, beginning to think you're memorizing the pattern, get to the next right side row aaaaaaaaaaaand...the stitch count is off.  You count, recount, freak out (you know the drill), think about PMing me, posting it to the group and then you check the charts and realize you forgot the decreases on the previous row.  Shoot!

    The mistake can be seen inside the red circles on the image above.  What to do?  The first reaction is to tink back, redo the last wrong side row (paying attention this time) and move on.  That is all fine and dandy when you're on the first or second repeat, but what happens when you're already 10 repeats into the pattern and you had to tink back 6 of those???  It happened to me and I got tired of tinking so I came up with a patch.
     Work all the way to the place where the decrease should be.  Slip the first st that should have been knit together paying attention to how it lays on the needle (so it isn't twisted) to the right hand needle.

     Now, stick the needle on the stitch below the next stitch (shown by the red arrow):












and slip that stitch to the right hand needles.  Don't worry about the loop - it will go away.







     Put both stitches back on the left hand needle:

     Now slip the second stitch over the first one and continue knitting until you reach the next place where you forgot the decrease.

     This will create a right leaning decrease. I'll write another post showing how to do a left leaning decrease because blogger is giving me a very hard time with image position.