The Pain of Restarting

 First, here are some gratuitous shots of my Pax shawlette. Yum yum yum, go make this pattern. I can't wait to buy Aiobe Ni's shawl collection.

 Blocking

    Modeled by my couch and by me.

 Let me talk about something that I'm sure you've all experienced. You get so far into a project. You feel like you're really starting to get somewhere, like you're about to make it over a hurdle. Only then are you forced to admit that you've made a big mistake, that you've been ignoring it and that it can't go on anymore.
Such is the case of my poor, poor laceweight cardi.
I've been working on this thing on and off since November. Yesterday at work I had gotten to the part where it was long enough to make the underarm stitches and move on to the body.
I tried to space it out to see how it would look, tried safety pins and stitch markers to make a rough show of what the sleeves would be like. It was then that I couldn't pretend it was ok anymore. It was too small. There was barely an inch of the front of the cardigan, the back was too small, and despite my last minute stitch additions the sleeves were not going to be big enough without adding a lot of underarm stitches, which always seems to make cardigans have weird underarm bulkiness. I also took a hard look at the messy increases that I had haphazardly added at the beginning. One side had increases that kinda got closer and closer to the edge, the other had them much further in and one part was just really, really wonky.

"A plan," though I, "I don't need no stinkin' plan! Give me a few stitches and I'll figure this thing out!" This is never a good idea. It never works. I should know this, but somehow it's a lesson I haven't figured out.

So today, I started again. You can see where I was at on the left, and my beginnings this morning.

I haven't had the heart to pull out the old cardi yet.

This time I have a plan. I have a giant mistake of a gauge swatch, notes from other similar designs and a solid plan. 

  

Look at those wonky increases. Really, what was I thinking?

 This is where it's at now. I worked on it a lot at work today- yay for quiet days! I have a lot left to get it back to where it was, but it's going to be so much better. Even the edge increases are neat and tidy now.

You can see that I've even planned space for shoulders, back and front. 

Now that I look at this, I'm wondering if I've left too much shoulder and not enough back, but honestly, it look so much better. A mistake like that can be called a design feature easily enough.

Sidetrack- I ran upstairs and grabbed a raglan t-shirt. Pulling a t-shirt on over your PJ top nets you a weird look from your fiance. However, after laying this over top of it's raglan increases, it looks like this is actually the right spot for them! I suppose that makes sense- this is sitting lower on the shoulders because the top of the neckband will be in contrasting purple.

Now I feel better.

And check out how neat my new increases are. They'll actually be a feature, as opposed to something I'm ashamed of.

That's what makes me happiest about restarting this, despite how painful it really was. I knew I had to do it, because I never would have been proud of my other cardigan. There were just too many mistakes, too many errors and I want this cardigan to be something I am really proud of showing off.