Unravelling

In October, I started work on a knitted shawl. The pattern came from Ravelry, where people claimed to have finished it in just a weekend. Or a week. Or a month. I had some red merino wool that I thought would make a beautiful (and beautifully warm) shawl and I told myself I would make a shawl to wear on Christmas Day, as a present to myself.

I started off well; the first ten rows offered no problems. Then I came to the lace section and I made the fatal error of not reading the instructions properly. I knitted along merrily, adding one extra yarn over for every 2 stitches. I had a lot more stitches than I'd planned by the time I came to the end of the section ten rows later. 'No problem,' I told myself. 'It's not a mistake. It's a feature.'

I carried on knitting. I ran out of yarn. I checked the instructions. No-one else had run out of yarn. 'Oh well,' I said. 'I have more stitches so, of course, I need more yarn.' I went back to John Lewis and spent £22 on four more balls of yarn. 'Never mind,' I said, wincing at the cost, and kept on knitting.

I knitted slower. And slower. And slower.

Christmas came and went. I didn't finish.

January came and went. I still didn't finish.

April arrived. I finished.

It didn't look right. It didn't hang properly. All that yarn felt very heavy and clumped together.

And then I realised why I'd been knitting so slowly. I'd known. Of course I'd known. Twenty rows in, at that first mistake, I'd known that the shawl was never going to work. But I'd kept knitting. Partly because, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am stubborn. I will keep denying the existence of the unicorn even when it is right in front of me.

But mostly the problem was that I was so attached to the idea of that beautiful red shawl, I couldn't bear to unravel my work and start again. For want of twenty rows the project was ruined. I could have undone those few and saved myself months.

I cursed and raged and felt bad and ate chocolate. Then I took a deep breath and pulled out one stitch and then another. Entire rows vanished as I pulled the yarn back into a ball. It's actually almost nice to know that no matter how badly I screwed up, there's no reason I can't undo it all and start again.

I'll cast on again in a little while. Maybe I'll have a red shawl by the time Christmas rolls around again. And you can guarantee that this time I'll be more careful.

In the meantime, if I want something red to make myself happy, I'll have to make do with the strawberries growing in my garden.