Lesson Learned

Okay, so, apparently, I'm a knitting idiot. This is a fact I have completely ignored and/or convinced myself otherwise up until today.

Actually, it all started a few weeks ago. I was busily knitting on this when I discovered a mistake. I attempted to fix it by dropping back a couple stitches just where the apparent mistake was. But, no dice. It's EXTREMELY hard to redo yarn-overs and lace accurately, and I'm no Yarn Harlot or anything, so fixing it was a big deal, but I thought I could eventually fix it. "Lifeline, schmifeline" was apparently my creed.

After I was finished unsuccessfully fixing the mistake, I decided to suck it up, and leave that one mistake in the middle of what will ultimately be THOUSANDS of stitches in the finished shawl. Trying to remember that really, I am NOT perfect, I pressed on, accepted the fact that there will be a mistake in the finished product, and began knitting again.

Now, apparently once is not quite enough to teach me a lesson (such as the extreme value of a lifeline), and I neglected to put one in even then!!!

DUH!

So today, that little oversight bit me in the ASS!!

I discovered, again, the need to correct a mistake. So, since there was no lifeline to help me out, I had to resort to tinking, ever-so-slowly, the two rows needed to reach the mistake (a couple missed increases across the row). The tinking had been done, now it was time to re-knit. I re-knit one RS row, began to work the purl row between, and discovered a funny-looking stitch. I have absolutely no idea how the stitch got so crazy looking (it appeared as if it just materialized out of thin air - I tried to drop it back to fix it, and the yarn that created the stitch seemed to be attached to . . . . . . nothing!



I have no idea what happened to create it, or what the heck I did to "fix" it - see the pics - it's not really fixed at all, but, uh, kinda like the first mistake, it's now a part of this shawl for better or worse! From the front it's a bit twisted, and on the back you can see all the extra yarn that magically materialized! Say it with me "WTF??"



And, lesson learned - I have inserted a lifeline at this point, so that future errors won't do this crap to me again. The problem is, I now have 71 stitches between two of the markers, and 73 stitches between the other two (to include the one area where the "problem" was). So, now I have yet another dilemma to solve!

Good thing it's SuperBowl time . . . !

Wish me luck!