Saved by Micro Knitting!

Not sure if this is an example of what not to do, but at least it serves to demonstrate the golden rule of checking over one's knitting work not just frequently but thoroughly. I thought I was following this rule with the gansey but when I actually looked over my work for errors, I was doing it too way quickly, convincing myself there weren't any errors, and not "seeing the trees for the forest" (*smile*). As I got closer to the neck shaping and shoulders, I realized with absolute horror that I had an unforgivable error. Many, many, many rows previously. 48 to be exact. 24 knitting hours ago. When had that happened? Was it when the dog was wanting to be let out? When I ran downstairs to get a Skinny Cow ice cream treat? Midway through an engrossing television program? It was an error I knew would drive me bonkers and deep down, I knew that if I left it as is, I would always notice ONLY those offending stitches every time I looked at the sweater. I debated ripping out entire rows, one by one, all the way down. Given the investment of amount of hours I would lose by doing just that, I mulled over trying to rip out the minimum number of stitches down in a segment to the offending mistake and then trying to knit back up within those 2 stitches, row by row. Fear told me I am "clumsy" at those sort of knitting manipulations. Optimism asked "what would I have to lose?" I figured if it didn't work out in the end, then last resort would be to rip out a good portion of the front of the sweater afterwards and reknit the entire top 1/3 of the sweater. I was willing to try any tactic to avoid having to do that. I am not familiar enough with lace type stitches to easily recognize what they should look like after each step. Because the error included some lace movements such as K2TOG, YO and the companion YO, S1, K1, PSSO, I knit a template of each pattern sequence and subsequent wrong side purl rows in light colored, bulky yarn. That way I was able to refer to this knitted "template" of what success would look like at each step in order to properly manipulate my crochet hook, size one-er's, and trusty-toothpick- turned-cable-needle. I attached orange markers on each row that was a K2TOG, YO and green markers on each row that warranted a YO, S1, K1, PSSO. Each wrong side row was absent a marker as things were getting quite crowded in such a confined space... onwards and upwards! I'm sure this type of recovery is easy for everyone else but I am rather tickled with myself as the end result is pretty darn good. After blocking it will be almost perfect. Time to put my needles down and do a happy dance!