Well - it did have to do with connecting nodes - I'm not entirely sure how it works but what I did was I deleted the smooth version and applied new textures to each projection. I think that somehow during the process of mapping I had put a new texture on a projection halfway through and the nodes started overlapping somehow. Anyway - I wasn't able to figure out how to fix it with the tangle I made but I was able to start over without losing the projections, uv maps or textures so 99 percent of the work was saved.

You can look at the results here:
Knight WIP thread