Petulant Poncho

Forget everything I might have told you about the poncho on Thursday or Friday.
It was all lies, anyway.
I wasn't even here.
I wrote those posts Wednesday morning before we left for my in-laws' place in upstate New York.
Obviously I was being a bit optimistic about the whole thing.

On The Road, Again
It's a four hour drive. I packed my knitting in the back, which left me twiddling my thumbs for the trip. But I was home from work early Tuesday and spent many hours that night and Wednesday morning working on the evil poncho, so I figured my wrists could use a break.
(Samson—above—likes being in the car. He much prefers to ride with his head out the window, but it was too cold and he isn't allowed to on the highway anyway. Baru—left—hates being in the car, as you might suspect. Stresses the poor thing out terribly. Thank goodness he out grew getting sick.)

Leave Well Enough Alone
Wednesday night I'm sitting there knitting with my mother-in-law, and I keep finding knit stitches that aren't paired with a YO. As I mentioned on Wednesday, when I encountered these I just worked them in pattern. Well, for some reason I take a closer look.
And I realize that stupid "edge stitch" has been going for a walk.
It's working its way around the poncho and leaving a groove behind it, which is screwing up the pattern.
Of course, things went wrong about 15 rows back (I was on row 38 or so when I noticed) because heaven forbid the mistake be reachable. After all Fisherman's Rib is wicked tricky to rip back because of all that yarn over nonsense.
So I spend an hour picking a few rows out stitch by stitch.
Then I realize that is taking too long. It crosses my mind to leave well enough alone and just keep going, but no. I have to keep trying to "fix" it.
My next attempt was to get a smaller needle tip and cord (I'm using my Denise set at this point) and thread it through the row where things went wrong, much like you would thread a lifeline.
Of course this doesn't work out very well at all, because of all that yarn over nonsense. When I removed the size 8 needles and unraveled the rows I had a mess on my hands composed of loose strands from missed yarn overs.
I spent some more time picking out a few rows stitch by stitch until I finally decided it was a lost cause and just pulled all the way back to the K1,P1 rib.

Maybe Cables are an Option
On Thursday I said "screw it."
This was supposed to be a simple pattern I could work on while we were visiting the family. I decided to just work the entire poncho in K1,P1 rib.
That lasted about 8 rows. It occurred to me K1,P1 rib might pull in too much. Who wants a form fitting poncho?
So I switched to reverse stockinette, threw in four six-stitch cables, and maintained the center rib.
Worked about 25 rows when I decided the rev st st didn't do the colors of the yarn justice.
Put the poncho away in disgust and worked on my stealth sock instead.

Back to Square One
We drove home today (Saturday).
My knitting ended up packed within reach in the car.
After sleeping on the situation, I decided to give the Fisherman's Rib one more chance. I'm not letting some stupid pattern get the best of me!
During the four hour trip home I pulled back to the 7 cm point of the K1,P1 rib, marked my center stitches for the increases, and locked down the stupid edge stitch with a marker on one side and my row counter on the other.
I think that has helped quite a bit for keeping track of what is going on.
I'm also remembering to reset the markers for the increases on the next row, so the increases are lining up more attractively.
Every so often I still seem to encounter a random knit stitch lacking a yarn over, but there doesn't seem to be a pattern to it, and I'm making an effort to create a YO, which should prevent any groove from forming. (Why these YOs are missing to begin with is beyond me.)
At press time, I'm on row 25 and things seem to be progressing nicely.
But mark my words, if anything else goes wrong, I'm totally switching to a shawl.