Smackdown

I should have known better than to have been so overconfident in my last post.  The knitting fates rarely let you get away with such cockiness.  Within 6 hours of that post, the project smacked me right back down to reality and time consuming re-knitting.  To make a long story short, there was an incorrect stitch count, a misguided attempt to "wing it" which I quickly realized was ridiculous, followed by the decision to yank the needle out of approximately 385 stitches without a lifeline (yes, I really need to learn not to make important knitting decisions at 4am). For the past two nights I've been picking up stitches, repairing dropped stitches, counting, recounting, trying to mark pattern repeats, and generally get the pattern back on track.

It's as fixed now as it's going to get, and I learned a valuable lesson:  when the pattern says to count your stitches frequently--do it!

This morning I finished the main color section of the project while almost holding my breath and then breathing a huge sigh of relief.  My cake of yarn seemed to be diminishing a little too quickly last night, and the worry that I wouldn't have enough started to set in. This yarn is a skein from a monthly club and to get more I would have to beg for someone's leftovers or a trade. I finished the last main color row without a problem, but  here's all that's left:

Despite these issues, I really have been enjoying this pattern, which I'll go ahead and reveal is the shawl Whippoorwill (Ravelry pattern).  I was actually quite excited to get back to it each night.  My knitting mojo must really be back.  I certainly hope so since I received a box filled with soft tweedy yarn this week and cast on the Chelsea Skirt last night in between my shawl repair work.

The yarn is Knit Picks City Tweed HW in Chipmunk.  Given the latest knitting smackdown, I was very diligent and made a nice big swatch.  So far, so good.