To Tink or not to Tink ...

This is the early stages of a shawl. The yarn is a two-ply charka spun (by me) cotton. I am thinking that this shawl has served it's purpose and should now be ripped back.

Last spring I finally got the hang of my charka and starting spinning up a storm. Eventually I finished the first 4 ounces and plied it to an almost invisible-in-places thread. Then I started in on the next color. (I had 4 hanks, each about 4 ounces, each a different natural shade.) The yarn had decided that it would become a very simple pi shawl and would be knit while we traveled around Scandinavia over the summer. I was doing well and spinning it for about an hour an night when my mother-in-law suddenly had a stroke.

At some point during the long week that followed, I cast on for this shawl and then knit it in the hospital. Then I knit it while sitting shiva. During most of the summer it sat in the bottom of my sock knitting bag and occasionally got worked on but mostly I knit socks this summer -- frantically and everywhere. In late August when I returned to work I knit on the shawl during the first meeting or two and then once again relegated it to the bottom of the bag while I knit socks and other things. Periodically it emerged for a round or two (at over 900 stitches per round at this point, a round takes a while) but it always descended to the bottom of the bag again.

Today I took it out and took a good look at it. There are a bunch of messy stitches where it came off the needles while in the bag and unstretched it looks like a crumpled mess. Spread out it is light and airy and I cannot, now, see myself wearing it. I am contemplating ripping it and putting the yarn away until the rest of the cotton is spun and plied. Maybe someday we will take that trip and I will knit good memories in to the yarn but for now it just makes me sad.