A Shawl that Wasn't

I'd been planning this shawl for a decade. I had the perfect yarn picked out, and the pattern, and gorgeous dreams of how it was going to turn out...

That didn't quite happen. A couple of months ago I realized that I could use my seven skeins of Knitpicks Shine instead and I cast on and formed new gorgeous visions of the shawl I was knitting... and four skeins in something went badly wrong. Best guess is that I knit the same row of lace twice, but despite hours of picking back and re-starting that row I could not make it work.

What do you do at that point, when you're probably thirty hours in and can't move forward another stitch? I know knitters who would unravel the entire thing and immediately cast on again. I'm not one of those. I have ripped back shawls, but I draw the line at knitting the same pattern on my second (or third) attempt. Not when I'm this far in and I've done that much lace.

I could have unravelled the yarn and put it back into my stash, but I think that would have made me feel worse than just binding off everything I'd knit before things took a wrong turn. I love the drape and the way that the lace looks. I just wish I'd been able to keep going until I'd used all seven skeins.

At some point, I'll knit the full shawl as planned. Just not right now.