Well, I’ve made the first decision regarding the knitting.  I’m starting over – or at least not finishing the original shawl.

Last night I counted my stitches and had an odd #.  There should have been an even number of stitches. Did I miscount? I don’t think so, as this jives with what I remember when I put the shawl down all those years ago.  I seem to remember discovering I had lost at least one stitch somewhere along the way and the house being too noisy to concentrate to figure out how to fix it.

As it turns out, it was a good decision.

I hated to throw all that knitting away, so I decided to just bind off. Well over 200 hundred stitches into the bind off I found that the yarn had broken and I simply couldn’t catch it to attempt a repair. So, into the trash it went after all.

I still have a huge cone of the Jaggerspun.  Lots of choices.  Last night I spent hours looking at patterns on-line. Even printed one out. But I’m not sure it’s the right pattern.

But,  I can’t start knitting yet. Between Flappy Bird, the weekend hand quilting and the binding off, I’ve aggravated my tennis elbow. I sure hope ripping out quilting doesn’t do the same. That’s today’s project as I finished my book.

No, I’m not blaming one of my favorite bloggers yet, as I haven’t picked up the needles to start knitting yet.  Yet, I’m sure you are looking at the picture saying to yourself “What do you mean you haven’t picked up the needles?”

Yes, not only do I have numerous quilt UFOs, there are a few yarn UFOs lurking around — although I’ve done my best to lock them away in the basement.  This one — I think it’s called Shaped Triangle from A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen – sat on my nightstand untouched for years before I finally got it to the basement (when working on it I checked the book out from the library.) It stayed there for a while before calling out to me to bring it to the light of day.

How many years?  Well, my niece 20-year-old niece was in 1st grade. She, her brothers and mother were living with us when I set it aside. I simply couldn’t knit this pattern with 4 grade school kids in the house.

So, now the questions:

• Can I figure out where I am in the pattern?
• If not, do I just break the yarn off and start over?
• And if I do, do I use this pattern or something else?

The yarn is Jaggerspun Wool/Silk 2/18 in Admiral.

Perhaps with all these questions, I should either put the binding on the baby quilt or rip out the quilting on the large quilt. (I have a new quilting time — next Wednesday).

Maybe I’ll go read some more of James Rollins’ Subterranean.