Knitting. Or rather, unknitting.

Early last Fall, I cast on for the Faroese Shawl from a Gathering of Lace. It is the shawl on the cover of the book, and I think it is pretty, but any pattern that starts off with "cast on 421 stitches" is pretty major in my world.

And the shawl refused to grow. Now, I realize that I was knitting the whole of the outside edge of the shawl, and that as I progressed each row would get shorter. But still, no growth. And then the mistakes began. I will fully admit that there is no question that all of this my own fault. Charts were clear, techniques were basic and/or explained. I know I have a short attention span, and the chart was long. Post-its marked my place on the chart, but if I had been a smart person, I would have used more stitch markers. Mistakes were made. One half of the shawl was pretty darn near perfect. The center panel was dead on. But the first half? A mess. Stitch counts off, random yarn-overs, distorted diamonds, lines that were all over the place. And while I feel like I can fix a lot of things, this was beyond my ability. So it sat in the basket of current projects untouched for months. For a long time, I thought I would be able to come to terms with the errors and just move on, but I finally came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to be able to move on, and that this yarn deserved a better fate. So today, I ripped. out. the. whole. thing.

All scruched up on the 32inc. Addi #10:


After being freed from the needle. That's a CD case for reference as to the actual size of the thing:


And all the wool wound back up. Diet coke can for reference. (Hey, use what ya got.):


Which for those of you who don't know, that is a lot of wool.

So, this brings my current projects to a reasonable number. The sweater that has a few more inches of ribbing and a sleeve left, a sock that has been languishing unloved, and the mohair shawl that might meet my ripping wrath later today. But right now it is sunny out and I'm going to head out to the High Desert Trail.