Oh wow, it's finally a FO post. I haven't completed any project in a while that I can post about! The thing about sample knitting is, you can take pictures of the finished product, but can't post it anywhere until the pattern is released. So I haven't been posting a lot of things..
Swallowtail.
In Malabrigo Lace Merino Wool 1 skein.
Color? Pink Frost.
This took about 5 days to finish, but really should've been 3~4 days. The main body lace part is a bit too addicting and I ended up going 2 more repeats than the pattern, so I ended up tinking back one stitch at a time because this knitter didn't use a lifeline. Lifeline is a contrast yarn you would run through the stitches every few rows, so in case you must rip it out, you can take your needles out and just rip back to that row, and put the stitches back onto the needles. I know so well about them, but I didn't use it. Why? Because I didn't think I would mess up!
I am quite arrogant in thinking that I don't make mistakes in knitting but it's a bit true. My gauges are almost always right, the way I imagine the yarn + pattern combination is almost always correct. Lace? I never skip YOs or k2togs.
In life I'm also quite arrogant. I always think that I have a plan, and rarely mess up the plan. To really think back to the past, there's only 1 time, things really didn't go as I planned. All the other times, things pretty much went along with my plans. Lifelines? I never had backup plans, but only improvised when some things needed tweaking. No need for any "lifelines" to fall back on.
Isn't that pretty arrogant of me or what? Or could it be that I rarely get startled by a change of plans or a little tweaking along the way. For this shawl, for instance, I never stopped to count the stitches, which is why I knitted more than I should've in the first place. For Citron, another popular lace-weight shawllette, I did NOT count any stitches for sure, because it didn't matter whether you have the correct # of stitches for that shawlette! I knew a lot of people got frustrated with the pattern because there are just A LOT of stitches after a bunch of t1kbl's. There's no real pattern on this shawlette, so why stop and count them? Will 1 or 2 extra stitches matter all that much?
Plans are great because you have a general concept or theme, and then you just run with it. I still don't think I'll ever use a lifeline, unless I do some crazy lace shawl pattern--which I doubt because I'm just not that kind of knitter. Or a person. But I just know in the end, it'll all work out, lifeline or not.