Brandywine Shawl - Almost Finished

I didn't finish with the Olympics on Sunday. I finished the knitting last night. I'm waiting for the arrival of the blocking wires I ordered to block the shawl and call it done.

This knit is a story of woulda', shoulda', coulda' . . .

If I woulda' started knitting sooner, I woulda' finished before the Olympics end.  I completed the project in 7 days and won this cool Knitting Champion 2010 Gold Medal, courtesy of the Yarn Harlot. 



I shoulda' known better than to park my knitting on the chair for a minute while I checked on something on the computer.  I was distracted for more than a minute and when I returned to my knitting, I found Johnny Be Good stretched out on top of it.  When I picked up the knitting it was curiously wet.  I discovered the Johnny had been chewing the circular knitting needle (probably) and gnowed through the knitting in a handful of places.  As I was ripping back to before the yarn breaks, I saw an opportunity to correct an early mistake and before long, my shawl project looked like this. Yes, I did.  I ripped out more than 100 rows and started over. Two days later, I had re-knit and caught up to where I was before that moment of carelessness.

I still probably coulda' finished before the closing ceremony if, when I was on the home stretch, I didn't decide to drop a few stitches in the lace band for a more than a few rows to try to fix another niggling mistake.  This pattern wasn't difficult and I didn't think I needed to consider using a lifeline, but if I had, I wouldn't have spent an entire evening playing with the dropped stitches and then, after I was unsuccessful, ripping out several 8 row repeats when I only a few to go. 

It's been a while since I picked up a pair of knitting needles . . . and I'm afraid it showed in my stumbles with this project. But it's done and I know that after it's blocked, I'll wear it a lot.