CraftyPawz: the sweater - fixing a mistake

I was super happy with my sweater progress. I managed to finish an entire ball of Cascade 220 Superwash in 5 days while on vacation. When we got home, I joined the second ball of yarn and knitted it onto a longer cable to try it on ... and noticed I had completely messed up one of my raglan increases 8 rows back (it veers off to the left at the marker). This is not a mistake I can live with.

First things first, the sweater went into time-out. I was upset, and that is no time to be trying to fix a mistake that involves increases. The brain is a wonderful thing, and within a few days I had a plan of attack for how to fix my mistake.

Some of the tactics I used:
1. I specifically picked Sunday, early afternoon, when the sun is at its best in my living room. I have a nice light carpet to use as a background for the dark yarn. I put on the Oakland Raiders game so there was something in the background, but nothing I actually needed to watch (they lost, again).
2. I used a size 1 circular (recently freed from a sock, so it was easy to grab) instead of a lifeline to mark a good row.
3. I used some size 4 dpn's (again, recently used and easy to grab) instead of size 7's (which is the needle size I'm using for the sweater). I put one in place for exactly the stitches I intended to rip down to, which was one row above the "lifeline". I selected 4 good stitches and got a second opinion.

4. I followed those edge stitches up and placed markers on my cable so I knew which stitches I would be dropping. That was 12 stitches. I used a fresh size 7 circular to knit up to the first marker and then dropped the 12 stitches.

5. This is my favorite idea that I came up with - I used a hair clip to get all of those squigly bits of yarn out of the way. I just left the one strand of yarn I was using free for each row.

6. I carefully knit across using the size 4 dpn's, making absolutely sure I got my increases right this time. At the end of each "row", I had enough yarn left over that it was still easy to work, and then I carefully redistributed the yarn back across the row so the stitches were even. Since I was using dpn's, I could knit every row instead of turning and purling. (increase row, knit plain row, repeat). There's still a but of unevenness at the edges of the drop section, but I'm pretty sure it will block out.