Floods, storms, work, conferences... what really had me beat was a six-month stretch of knitting failure. After all these decades of knitting, everything I touched since I finished the Elizabeth cardigan either bored me, and was ripped out, or defeated me. Simple cables, joining in the round, the most basic lace pattern possible -- if we counted the number of dropped stitches they would cover San Antonio. Apparently I completely lost all ability to knit.
Responses varied. Folks on Ravelry and in my Sunday knitting meet up suggested simple projects. Actually, the Sunday meeting started out sympathetic and then suggested nice garter-stitch dish clothes (there was sniggering). Then on Rav someone suggested another tack: something challenging that required attention.
Attention? Oh. Well. That is always in short supply chez Rob. But maybe I had, in fact, decided knitting did not require attention. Thus the wrong number of stitches, too few then too many, dropped stitches, lost row counts. So then I got stubborn. Stubbornness is never is short supply chez Rob.
See, I fell in love with and bought some very expensive tencel laceweight yarn: Prism's Delicato. I was clever -- I had them wind it for me at the store. And then I decided, of course, not to make the pattern that inspired the purchase. So I searched and searched, and decided to make this:
That is Indian Sun by Sue Hanmore. I am of course changing it: no large collar, no bell at the bottom of the sleeves, which will be about elbow length. It is, in fact, a very simple lace pattern, that repeats on every row.
I have started, and ripped, this pattern probably a dozen times, before the idea of paying attention really sank in. Then I realized it was huuuuge. So I ripped it out again. Finally, finally, I have the beginnings of the back of the top. And it turns out I am knitting a whole top in laceweight yarn on size 1 needles. But I just did not want to give up on either the yarn or using it for this (or a version of this) pattern. So there.
To come:
- the carpet still has to be ripped out. When I get that far, I will post pictures.
- I am taking a tapestry design class this Saturday and hope to at least get some critique of my existing designs and a warp on two looms.
- since I just landed a very interesting job indexing a multilingual book, the rest may take some time.
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