Knitting Drama

Oh knitting drama it definitely was. So painful that I couldn't even bring myself to write about it until it was completely sorted. In my last post I mentioned the lovely Ishbel shawl and the fact that I was about to start the lace section? Yes, remember, with me so far? Its possible you may be guessing where I'm going with this, but I'll continue.....

Lace section was going well, in fact about 2/3rds finished when disaster struck! I knitted row 5 instead of row 3. Sounds surmountable, however I had about 350 stitches on that row, and I'd already knitted the following row too. I started the laborious process of unpicking stitch by stitch and completely lost it. Somehow with the slipperiness of the laceweight yarn and my sheer annoyance I ended up with the wrong amount of stitches and just knew I would never be able to recover it, so off the needles it came :(

As this was meant to be a birthday present a swift decision had to be made. I ran round the house rounding up some 4ply (my plan being to make the smaller size shawl with the thicker yarn, ie less knitting to complete in the 11 days I had left before said birthday). I immediately got back on the bike (or cast on) and with pleasure I can say that I safely cast off at about 9pm on Easter Monday 9th April. This version which actually ended up being the smaller size stocking stitch part but larger size lace section only took me 7 days of intermittent knitting. I was astonished, still am if I'm honest....