It's Hard to Know When to Quit

Four hundred yards in, it's become extremely obvious that this shawl is not working. I'm not going to name the pattern I was using because it's got 10,000 projects on Ravelry and that makes it pretty obvious that I'm the one who can't follow the instructions to increase in the feather and fan section. 

I thought it would be okay if the eyelets didn't line up after the increases, but they lined up on one half of the shawl and not the other.... That made it pretty much impossible to think of it at a "design element." So I pulled the entire thing off of the needles and unravelled it to the end of the first lace section, sure that I could finish it off in garter stitch.

Guys, I had close to 300 live stitches just sitting there with no needle and picked them all back up without disaster! I don't even try to mess with things like that.

This is a lot of hours of knitting and I could finish it off in garter stitch but I love this yarn and want it to be something better and the past few months have been all about making better knitting decisions. So I'm starting over with a completely different pattern.

(Putting in a lifeline between the stockinette section and the feather and fan would have meant I could save the shawl and finished it as originally planned, but as much as I appreciate the concept of lifelines, I'm rarely motivated enough to thread one in when I should.)

I've picked out another pattern that I think will be absolutely gorgeous, so I'm not feeling too bad about the lost hours.