The state of affairs.. as it relates to the disaster

Well, after a cry and a full on flogging for not putting in a lifeline (which just fyi, I'm still not going to do), I made a plan. Fortunately for my Haruni (now also known as Disasteruni), I went the sane route of un knitting five or so rows of my project. While Hilary's advise of ripping it out would have been my choice route about two pattern repeats ago, I couldn't imagine giving up all that hard work (not hard, just time consuming)... and the idea of dropping all those stitches and then trying to figure out how to bring them back up with all the decreases and increases seemed like a VERY daunting task. So I took my friend PJ's advice and took each stitch out one. at. a. time. I've got one pattern row left to take out before I'm to a spot that I'm SURE is right, and then I will start knitting back up.

The lesson I learned from this is not what you would think. You would think that I was going to put lifelines in at the end of each repeat so that I could just pull the needles out and rip back. But I'm not. I strongly detest lifelines and I only put them in on huge projects that would be impossible to tink back (like my Girasole that has 640 stitches on it. I did tink 320 stitches on that one and even that wasn't too bad... ). I don't like knitting into the next row after the lifeline. The stitches get so tight, the line usually twists itself around the needles and it's ugly.
The lesson also wasn't to use stitch markers. I don't like them. They get in the way, they're a bit annoying and I find I'm more of a robotic knitter when I have them between every repeat. Yes, I make mistakes, but I like the fact that without them, you are forced to pay attention to your pattern and actually engage with your knitting. I remarked to my friend on Monday that I was going to change the name of my shawl to FFS, because I was constantly pulling out a couple stitches to get the repeat right... but it was only because I wasn't following the pattern properly... I like being able to notice that and I like learning the skill of going back and seeing where your mistakes are and then fixing them. Now, not to the point of spending numerous hours unknitting numerous rows, but that brings me to the lesson I actually learned from all this. Ready?
DO NOT KNIT LACE WHEN YOU ARE TOO TIRED TO PAY ATTENTION. Yup... that's the lesson. I knew I was too tired to be knitting... probably right around the beginning of those five rows. I even said how tired I was... I even said that I should put it down... but did I? No. Lesson learned!