Like finishing all over again

Having finally witnessed the glory of blocking when I finished my Old Town scarf this summer, I decided to go back and block my first FO, my Old Shale scarf. At the time, blocking sounded really scary and complicated, and I decided I was happy enough with how my scarf looked un-blocked. I was sure that if I did try to block it, I would somehow ruin its appearance or texture. Better not to risk it.

Now I know better, so I blocked it, and then I was so happy with it I had to wear it right away even though the weather just started to warm up again.

To make things even more exciting, I had always been mildly bothered by the very poor-quality picture of the scarf that I had on my Ravelry project page. So with it in its freshly-blocked, pretty state, I did another photo shoot. I went from this:

Ugh :(

To this:

Much better :)

I was never unhappy with this scarf, especially as my first completed knitting project, and now that I've given it a makeover I like it even more. But it is interesting to realize that while I still feel like just as much of a beginner most of the time, I have learned a few things since then. Like, it's really hard to see a) what you're doing and b) the pattern you created on dark yarn. And that blocking is not scary at all, but wonderful and magical. And that it is, in fact, possible to fix mistakes in lace (I restarted this scarf after working on it for weeks because I messed up and thought all was lost).