Hooked, but not on Crochet

I have become hopelessly hooked on designing patterns for shawls. I did have a 'go' last year and found that it wasn't as easy as I had thought, but a friend suggested rather than writing out a pattern, to just start knitting and see what happens - well I did and found that it is very addictive - sounds silly but I can't wait to see how an idea turns out..

First I knitted lots of little swatches with lots of YO and K2tog in a variety of combinations and as you can see just a slight alteration and the pattern is quite different - honest!















The first design is now blocking and I am delighted with the outcome and am currently knitting the second April Showers Shawl, this time from the charts that I created from my knitting.














Question - If its your own pattern how come you still make silly mistakes? I don't have an answer, but I did have to unpick several rows because I had missed a yarn over!