Knitting as Metaphor

Hang with me -- I'm about to bring knitting into "it" again -- but this is knitting as metaphor.

I'm currently knitting a lace shawl. Lace is knit using stitches and spaces strategically placed according to a chart. My current shawl uses those spaces to create leaves and snowflakes (it's a "seasons" shawl with fall into winter).

I was knitting along, and noticed that I had made a mistake of many stitches, that stretched across a row for about seven inches, three rows back. It was very visible, and to fix it, I had to "unknit" each column of stitches, fix the mistake in that column and then knit the stitches back up. I had to repeat that process for about 60 columns. It took about an hour. Once I was finished, the mistake was gone, but the stitches still don't look "right." They are kind of loose, as if they have been unknit and stretched. Once I'm finished, I'll block the project -- washing it and pinning it out to dry into the correct shape. It's probable that the blocking will fix the wonky stitches.

Enough about knitting. What happens in life when I make a mistakes, when I look back at the fabric and see the stitches places backward, knowing they are incorrect? What does it mean when I ask for forgiveness for the mistake? Am I asking someone else to allow me to unknit and reknit, removing the error? Is that even possible in life? Does it mean I'm asking the other person to keep on knitting, ignoring the error? Do we do our best and hope that the grace of blocking will even it all out?

What is forgiveness?

Image: Another one from my Saturday morning walk.