New student

I have been helping a lady with her knitting. She has done some knitting, has made several dishcloths but now wants to knit a vest. We picked out a beautiful grey tweed yarn and she knitted her gauge swatch. She found that her stitches were looser than recommended so went down to a smaller size needle. After she knitted several rows she dropped a couple of stitches. I recommended that she rip it out and start over. She was not very happy, but as we all know--as you knit so shall you rip!! I remember the first time I had to rip out a sweater. It was several days of fuming and fussing before I finally picked it up from the corner I had thrown it in and ripped it out. Fortunately, the second time the pattern was much clearer and I didn't have to rip it out again. When I have made knitted lace, I have ripped out several rows several times, usually because I made a mistake but occasionally a pattern is wrong. In that case, I finally had to give up on the pattern and find another.

I was making a baby bonnet from a magazine that I thought followed the standard knitting rule of finishing each row at the same point. However, the pattern was Australian and their rule of thumb (as I understand it) is just to stop at the end of the row and start the next row above it. I finally called the company and they had the designer call me. Call me a coward but I haven't had the nerve to work on that bonnet since.