Setback

I am a FOOL. Sigh.

I finished chart 6, completing the main body of Scheherazade. However, I was prevented from doing a little happy dance by a) the late hour b) a horrifying realization. I was trying to remember whether I was supposed to purl across the final row or not, and after examining the instructions for the edging, concluded that I was not supposed to. The problem is...I was pretty sure I HAD done so the first time.

I checked. I had. Which meant...the edging was on backwards. If you place the shawl right-side up, the WRONG side of the edging is face up. AGH.

Fortunately it was late at night so the blow was somewhat numbed by tiredness. In a schocking display of good sense that can only be explained by the late hour, I did nothing. I didn't rip anything out, and I didn't keep going on the second edging. The way I saw it at the time, I had several options:

--Put the second edging on correctly and live with it.
--Put the second edging on incorrectly and call it a design element.
--Rip out the first edging and reknit it correctly.

I wavered equally between all of these decisions, and now in the clear light of day, I have made my decision. I'm going to rip out the first edging. I hope. I discounted this possibility last night because I was worried about losing the last row of the shawl, BUT, because the edging is knitted on sideways, one stitch of the body is set free for each row that you rip out, which means that, carefully done, I should be able to pick up those stitches carefully one at a time.

Risks:
--The yarn, after ripping out, will be in no shape to knit up again.
--I drop/fail to correctly pick up body stitches.
--The yarn will not rip.

Response:
--I'm pretty sure I have enough yarn to cut any damaged areas and do a spit splice.
--I've knit the body charts twice now. I'm pretty sure I can fix any damage with a minimum amount of risk, though it may cost me my sanity to do so.
--I can (gulp) snip the yarn if I get to a really knotty spot. I'm actually really kind of concerned about this one because I know there was a place where I was tinking back and got stuck because of some bizarre splitting that had managed to tangle up the stitches. I just can't remember if that was on the edging or the body. Then, again, we spit splice and move on.

I think it is a sign of knitterly growth that I can consider the matter so coldly. It is probably not a sign of maturity that I really, really want to put the end I'm on now on a holder and go fix the bad part first. It would be silly and I'm trying not to give into this impulse. I will finish the second edging before redoing the first. Maybe. Since I don't have another pair of wooden needles that size. Although, I could just take the tips off and put the cable caps on, because I DO have plenty of cables. But that would be silly. Sigh.