Little Arrows~~Down

It seemed to be progressing all too well that Little Arrows shawl.  One starts with 11 stitches and I had increased up to 189 in total merely adding two stitches per row.  By my calculations that's 89 rows and then I truly and completely messed things up.

That lace thing, have I mentioned it before, it takes concentration.  Not that yes, I'm sort of concentrating on this, but the doing some kind of complicated statistical analysis kind of concentration.  (Well, again maybe it's me, but I have to concentrate if I'm using statistical formulas.)  I can do that sort of thing for spurts of time, but then I really should stop.  But do I stop, of course not.  I'm one of those stiff upper lip, get-'er-done kind of gals which in this particular case causes nothing but huge problems.

There was a little minor problem on about row 20, but it was tucked into an edge so I knit on.  There was another entire row of stitches that threw the pattern off by one stitch at about row 55, and even that I thought could be tolerated.  But then at row 87 I moved the life line without first realizing everything was very, very wonky.  That was it the final blow.

Little Arrows sat alone all by itself on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings as I contemplated its future.  To distract myself I fumbled around with other projects, but that shawl weighed heavy on my mind.  Here was the crux of the problem.   Do I pretend I don't know that it contains three areas of visible mistakes OR do I take the hit and frog the entire thing and start over.  Because you know if you've been reading along with this blog, especially with lace, once you rip below the life line you are in no-person's land with regard to finding all the proper stitches.  Thus for best results, start over.

Rather than decide I thought I'd have a fresh set of eyes review the work and give an opinion.  Tena came over for knit night on Thursday, and I hardly gave her a chance to sit down before I started thrusting Little Arrows at her.  I had to occupy myself making wine spritzers in the kitchen while Tena examined it.  She was ever so kind, oh yes I see what you are talking about, but . . .  I stopped listening at this point because she'd confirmed what I needed to know.  The mistakes were visible.  What was I thinking, of course they could be seen; for heavens sake, I saw them.

After a larger than usual "sip" of my spritzer I took all 189 stitches off the needles, removed the life line and began to rip.  For the first few seconds it was tough, it might have even hurt a bit, but then once I got on a roll it started to feel so right.  It took nearly 35 minutes to frog the shawl and wrap the thread back on the spool, but when I was completely finished it was clear the right decision had been made.

So here's Little Arrows now.  Second time around (or whatever time it is) will be the charm.

See there's 13 rows done, flawlessly, so far

Notes to self (you are welcome to read on but it is directed to me for current and future reference):

• Use more than one life line.  Scrap yarn is not scare in the house so there's no need to act as if there's no more than that one gray strand.  A cat has nine lives or so they say, maybe you need as many as well when it comes to knitting life lines.
• Read your own knitting.  Goodness sake, if you'd only spent more time checking how things looked before moving that silly singular life line, this whole mess could have been avoided.
• Other noted knitters you know have dynamics like this; you aren't alone.  In fact, this is part of the process and you say you like the process.  
• And when, when, when will you ever learn that there's no point in knitting on if you know a mistake is living somewhere in a project.  It ends up being the only thing you see.  Just buck up and do the right thing sooner and not later; it will save lots of time in the long run.