DOH!!!

Ever have one of those Homer Simpson "Doh!" moments? I had a long one last night. I have finished the center of my Tea Shawl and have begun the edging. The edging is a 10 row repeat with some increases that have to be reduced by 4 stitches in the last row of the repeat. The symbol for getting rid of the stitches is essentially a frown. Frowns are used as symbols twice in chart, one slightly larger than the other. I read the key to the charts for the frown and the instruction was "K st tog with shawl st" I thought this was some kind of 4 stitch decrease that I had never heard of. I asked the ladies at my s'nb if any of them knew what the "shawl stitch" was, no one did. Mara suggested that I check the index to see if there was a definition, there wasn't. She had brought in the two Modern Lace books that evening and so Wendy and I looked through them for the "shawl stitch" Still nothing. I checked a copy of IK to see if they defined the "shawl stitch" nada. No way I was giving up that easily. I FINALLY started the edging, and I was anxious to keep going, so I called K, who was fortunately home, and interrupted her program writing to get her help searching the internet for the "shawl stitch" She found something, the trinity stitch which was also referred to as the shawl stitch. Unfortunately, it did not decrease by 4 stitches. Mara was at this point looking through my book to see if I missed something. I was talking to K, Mara was showing me something in the book, I was trying to take notes on the trinity stitch, I looked again at the edging chart, K was telling me about an errata when DOH! and Duh! It hit me. "K st tog with shawl st" was not what I was supposed to be doing at that point, "K st...." was what I HAD ALREADY been doing on the odd rows to join the edging to the body of the shawl. All I had to do was to bind off four stitches at the beginning of that row. Oops, sometimes I seem to be more blond than the redhead that I am. I didn't do any more work on the edging though because K told me that 2 rows in my edging chart are wrong. Of course, she also told me that the diamond pattern, already finished by me, was wrong too. Oh well, nothing in life is perfect right? No photos today of the shawl because it basically still looks the same, in fact, everything I am working on basically looks the same, even though I have done work on most of my projects. Instead, I bring you Faneuil Hall decorated for the holidays (and probably misspelled by me)