To weave or unweave, an important lesson!

I recently got back to a long term project, weaving cloth for Odo's cloak, I had lost my copy of the weaving draft. This was not a big problem, as I had gotten it out of a book. In my mild frustration and excitement to get back to the project, I copied down to tie down, but not the order in which they were to be woven. I wove about 3 inches and noticed it was not looking right. I thought this was a result of improper beating and slogged on another 3 inches. It still did not look right. I went back to the book to check that I had copied the tie down correctly. I saw that the tie down was correct, and it was then that I realized my mistake!

I then had a very important decision to make, to weave or unweave. The part of me that did not relish redoing about 4 hours of work, said continue weaving, and tell people I had left it as a reminder of my mistake. However an important piece of advice Master Terafan had given me came to mind. This advice, when faced with the decision to go back and correct your work or not, you need to ask yourself, what is the more accurate representation of your skill a piece with an obvious error, or a piece without. Well obviously, I wish this piece to not have 6 horrible looking inches. So I have decided to unweave this section and continue weaving from the previous point. I think it will only take me a few hours to unweave this section. (Note: it actually took less than an hour!) This may seem like a lot, but since I have well over 40 hours already invested in the project, and hundreds more hours to go, it is but a small sacrifice.

The lesson here is to not rush things, particularly long term projects! The weaving specific lesson, is to always make sure you have the tie down and the pick order! I don't think I'll be repeating this mistake anytime soon. As a small aside, the draft copy is now taped to the loom, where I can work from it, so it is unlikely that this problem will arise again!

Lessons learned,
Jahanara