I’m in progress on the as-of-yet-still-unnamed Mrs Crosby Reticule Shawl. My goal date for the sample to be finished is the June summer TNNA show.
I frogged my initial prototype.
I just wasn’t liking it. In fact I was rather hating it.
You may recall I posted about this shawl about a month ago.  It’s a companion piece to Isn’t It Romantic?, but worked in laceweight yarn (Mrs Crosby Reticule, 100% merino) and a totally different shape. It (still) starts with a few cast on stitches, and grows into a wedge/curled shape shawl.
The main body of the shawl HADÂ a simple stockinette and lace panel design. I even sort of blocked it out, keeping it on the circular needle, to see how it would look. It was, to me, for this project, boring and a little messy looking. Â I didn’t like the edges. I didn’t like the lace rib.
One of the things that I’ve found as a designer is that I can go through several love/hate phases on a project. Even if there’s a time I’m not really sure of a project, often if I trust myself and power on, all will turn out fine. Â I didn’t get that feeling of uncertainty on this one, though. I was simply hating it.
That’s part of being a designer, too – knowing when something isn’t working, and trusting yourself on that, too.
And it is always better to frog sooner than later.
I spent a day playing with different stitch patterns (I use Stitch Maps in lieu of swatching and as an initial check on stitch counts) and redoing the charts. I ended up choosing a very pretty leaf lace panel, from one of the Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries, for the main body of the shawl.
It now makes me happy.