Unlike some creative projects, where starting is exciting or finishing feels like a triumph, my favorite part of knitting is the middle. I like the actual knitting, watching it grow with each stitch. So maybe it’s not surprising that I balk at the boring tasks that go with knitting projects like gauge swatches and blocking.

Just as I need to be pushed before I’ll bother to knit a gauge swatch, it was only because I was worried about the finished look of the shawl I was making that I bothered to block it. Am I ever glad I did! It turned out that I had dropped a stitch in the middle.

I knew I’d lost a stitch at the time, because the pattern required a fixed number of stitches and I had to add one at one point. I wasn’t thinking or I’d have looked for the dropped stitch then and fixed it on the fly. I guess I was so into my knitting I couldn’t be bothered to stop.

Normally for a dropped stitch, I get out my crochet hook and add the stitches in the ladder (as most dropped stitch how-tos show you to do), but I had finished the shawl. Since I had added another stitch, there was no ladder to repair, and I wasn’t about to take it apart. I found a video about fixing a dropped stitch on a finished project and followed the instructions.

The repair worked well enough. Another knitter once told me that:

A knitting mistake isn’t a mistake if you can’t see it from the back of a galloping horse.

I hold to that rule. But my blocking journey isn’t done.

The whole reason I started this blocking to begin with was the wavy dropped stitch* section that was a loopy mess in my shawl. I am still not sure how to deal with it. The part I’ve blocked looks better, but not great.

I’m not sure I want to mess with blocking the rest of the shawl, but maybe I better. There could be another mistake I need to fix in there.

Have you ever been saved by doing the “boring” thing?

Project Details for the interested:
Stitch Sampler Shawl (free pattern on Ravelry)
Dream In Color Classy yarn, Mermaid Shoes colorway

*Here “dropped stitch” is a specific knitting stitch, not a mistake. Totally confusing that they call it this, but this is the only name I know for it.