Do you see a mistake? Of course you don't. I fixed it. (Now be nice and stop looking!)
At Thursday night's knit night I made a mistake, a terrible mistake, on my Summit Shawl. I can't begin to explain it because even an experienced knitter, unless she is currently working on the same project, wouldn't understand what I was talking about. I started tinking, and kept on tinking, stitch by stitch, because I couldn't find a place to start knitting from again as a result of all the intentionally dropped stitches. Other knitters advised me to STOP and put the knitting away for another time.
Wise advice.
This morning I decided that since there is a logic to how the shawl is knit, there must be a logic to how it comes apart, and I would find that logic and fix the mistake. I never found the logic. After a while, I gave up and cheated instead, creating a yarn over where I needed one and knitting two stitches together where I needed one stitch rather than the two I had. It worked!!! Now I am knitting away, being very careful.
I blame my mistake on either:
a. knitting while talking
b. knitting after having had a Mojito with dinner.
Maybe both?
Anyway, to atone for my mistake, I decided I should follow the pattern's advice and learn how to knit backwards. This video (scroll to the bottom of the page) was a great help. Knitting backwards is easy. Just not yet. It does work and I can do it, but the longest stretch of stitches that can be done with this technique is 12 stitches long in parts, 11 in other parts, and 6 in most parts. There is just not a long enough section for me to become proficient on. I now know what a beginning knitter must feel like---clumsy. It takes me longer to knit backwards on those sections than it does to just turn the knitting around and purl. So I'll stick with purling on this project and save the backwards knitting for another time.
I have just finished the Summit Shawl. That tiny ball of yarn above is all I have left and, boy howdy, am I lucky. I never once weighed the yarn or the shawl to see how much I had used by this point or that point, so I had no idea how long to keep on knitting. AND I had never actually read ALL of the directions (dumb, lazy luck) to know that I had to finish on a left-curving section in order for the bind off instructions to work. I just kept on going and suddenly noticed that there wasn't a whole lot of yarn left. But I had just worked a left-curving section. So I was golden. Whew. 
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