It's Called Quirky...

It's 5am on a Saturday. Mr Sconch is snoring. I'm actually awake because I'm in pain, but now can't get back to sleep because of the noise emanating from that side of the bed. I can't complain too much I suppose, as he brought me a cup of tea at 4am when he realised I was awake.

Anyway, I digress.

It's 5am and I am now thinking about work. And patterns that are half formed in my head. And about end of term teacher gifts. And about the choir concert I have at lunchtime. And about the referendum and the impact that will have on Sconch. And about games and activities for the Sconchlet which would mean she doesn't feel like I'm constantly working instead of playing with her. And about yarny orders I need to place. And about the 10k run in two weeks.

But despite my head being in a total dither making me feel a little like I'm going to implode, mostly I'm thinking about the giant mistake I've just made in the Couthie Shawl I'm making and whether I should frog it or not.

Which perhaps says more about me that anything else.

It's a triangle shawl (the technical term escapes me right at this moment...) So it starts with 2 stitches on your needle and then increases every row. Right at the start I made a mistake which I decided to leave in as it was only the tip, and I figured it made it quirky. After all, nobody else would have a cute little point like that on theirs.

You see, in case you missed it, knitting is not my strongest point. I understand the mechanics of knitting. I can do the basic stitches. I know all about how stuff works up so I can competently answer customers questions (mostly now those customers get handed to Angela as she is a bit of a knitting guru - but for 2 years it was just me answering all the questions and I managed fine). But as for actually sitting down and knitting an actual 'thing'. Well. I stuck to my crochet. It's quicker. Mistakes are fixed easier. I'm really very good at crochet. Why bother knitting?!

But secretly this shawl has made me fall in love with knitting. Don't get me wrong, it's almost gone out of the window more times than I can count. Regulars in the shop have had to sit and fix things for me when I could no longer cope with redoing the same row. You see I picked a 4 ply pattern with lacy drop stitch sections to get me into this knitting lark. Which has been a steep learning curve to say the least.

Which is more than can be said for the shape of my shawl. The steep curve that is. As I now have this:

I've clearly done the same thing as I did at the start. I couldn't get it to show very clearly in the picture, but the shawl is now working up on the opposite direction, so both sides leaning ot the right instead of the left. So now my shawl is going to be a sort of zig zag...

But I think I might just keep it like that. I know it happened when I was fixing the row just before the drop stitches for the 13th time. I'm not entirely sure how it happened. I've obviously increased and decreased on the wrong sides and ended up working on the working side?! I have the correct number of stitches still...

I feel like I should undo it. I feel like I should fix the mistake and learn from it. But look. It's a whole section of drop stitches I'd need to frog back. That's a days' work.

Mr Sconch pointed out when it's wrapped round my neck it's not going to have a big neon sign attached to it saying 'I'm slightly the wrong shape, come and judge my creators' knitting abilities'. And he's right.

And I think I might even like the fact mine will be a slightly quirky shape. After all if it works and I like how it sits it might be the beginning of a new funky zig zag design in my head. (For a crochet pattern not a knitting one obviously. One step at a time here...)

But somehow I feel like I'll have failed with this project if I leave it wonky?

What do you think?!

Sam x

PS you can download the pattern and read all about the lovely Couthie Shawl by the Winwick Mum (Christine!) here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/couthie - the link will take you to ravelry, which will link to her blog :)