Silver lining help, please

I would have posted last night, but I wisely decided I was too upset to do it justice and not come off as whining. I'm still not sure I can, but I will try.

I am knitting a shawl to go with my dress for my sister's wedding, which is coming up in a month. When I picked up my needles for a couple of rows last night before cooking dinner, I had over a foot and a half of shawl, and was about 10 rows into the second of five balls of yarn. The shawl is knitted on 1.5 cm diameter needles, so it is loose and lacy, and looks wonderful. But that looseness ended up being a bad thing, as half-way through the row, my elbow slipped on the chair, about five stitches slipped off the needle, and the tension wasn't there to hold them in place. The shawl unravelled down the middle.

Perhaps if I was smarter, or a more experienced knitter, I could have rescued it. Mike and I did try to unravel it down to the last demolished row and put it back on the needles, but to no avail. Even trying to get the stitches on the needle was enough to pull out more along the row. In the end, I cut a piece of cardboard to wrap the yarn around, and tried not to completely break down in tears of frustration as I unraveled the whole thing.

I am looking for a silver lining, but it is eluding me. This is the fourth time I've had to restart this shawl, and the yarn that's been cast on and knitted four times is starting to show the wear. Unravelling the shawl put me back between 8 and 12 hours (estimated), and my hands aren't yet well enough to handle knitting for hours on end. Yes, I will likely have free time on my upcoming business trip to sunny Olds College, but I had hoped to make great steps towards finishing the shawl there, and now I'm the above 8-12 hours behind on that goal. Not to mention that the wedding is a mere four and a half weeks away.

I completely realize that there are wars going on in the world, that my family has had to deal with two deaths in recent months, that Mike has started physio and will be in a lot of pain for the next little while, and that there are far more important things to become upset over than a silly knitting project. There must be a silver lining. It's silly to be upset over something so trivial.

...

Cast on 60, knit. *sigh*