Lace Dreams
There is one problem with wanting to blog about knitting. It keeps you from knitting.
I had problem with the ripple scarf on Monday night. Drinking a beer and watching Deadwood, knitting away, I dropped a stitch. This rarely happens to me now, but I know where mom keeps her crochet hooks to I carefully set it down to grab a hook. Well, this yarn is slick (satiny stuff), the tension is moderately high, and it is medium/light weight yarn on 4.5 mm needles (US7). My moms smallest hook was probably the equivalent of 6 mm needle.
If you knit, you can see the disaster coming. The slippery yarn dropped down a row, then another, and another. Every attempt to rescue it with the seemingly gigantic hook sent that dropped stitch running in terror for the next row. After losing it down over a dozen rows, I gave up and started ripping back.
I had to rip back almost 4 inches to catch up to the runaway stitch and then get below it. Once recovered, I settled in to re-knit everything I had ripped and then for good measure a couple of rows above that point. Then I decided that Ripple Scarf and I needed a break from each other for a few days. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off entirely. I didn’t look at Ripple Scarf. I didn’t think about it, except for imagining knitting it while sitting at Midnight Mass (funny aside: I originally typed Midnight Madness…talk about crossing the streams) and wrapping it in the car on the way to Suffolk Christmas morning.
I took those two days to gaze upon lace patterns and fingering weight mohair. I took in the beauty of a pattern called the Peacock Shawl, which is stunning. I dreamed of knitting in lace.
I know funky chunky yarns are all the rage, but for me, there is something so incredibly appealing about lace. I am studying patterns, researching techniques, learning to decipher charts, and imagining that one day, at a point when a single runaway stitch isn’t a near disaster for my limited skills anymore, one day, I will knit a peacock shawl, in a perfect silk wool blend, with perfectly blended hues of sapphire, emerald, amethyst, and onyx.
This is what I dream about when I am staring off into space, Byram.
Anyway, this morning, Ripple Scarf and I got reacquainted and I spent 2.5 hours at the front desk knitting away, adding probably eight inches to its length. Whew. Only 3.5 feet to go and 13 days to do it in.
I had problem with the ripple scarf on Monday night. Drinking a beer and watching Deadwood, knitting away, I dropped a stitch. This rarely happens to me now, but I know where mom keeps her crochet hooks to I carefully set it down to grab a hook. Well, this yarn is slick (satiny stuff), the tension is moderately high, and it is medium/light weight yarn on 4.5 mm needles (US7). My moms smallest hook was probably the equivalent of 6 mm needle.
If you knit, you can see the disaster coming. The slippery yarn dropped down a row, then another, and another. Every attempt to rescue it with the seemingly gigantic hook sent that dropped stitch running in terror for the next row. After losing it down over a dozen rows, I gave up and started ripping back.
I had to rip back almost 4 inches to catch up to the runaway stitch and then get below it. Once recovered, I settled in to re-knit everything I had ripped and then for good measure a couple of rows above that point. Then I decided that Ripple Scarf and I needed a break from each other for a few days. I took Tuesday and Wednesday off entirely. I didn’t look at Ripple Scarf. I didn’t think about it, except for imagining knitting it while sitting at Midnight Mass (funny aside: I originally typed Midnight Madness…talk about crossing the streams) and wrapping it in the car on the way to Suffolk Christmas morning.
I took those two days to gaze upon lace patterns and fingering weight mohair. I took in the beauty of a pattern called the Peacock Shawl, which is stunning. I dreamed of knitting in lace.
I know funky chunky yarns are all the rage, but for me, there is something so incredibly appealing about lace. I am studying patterns, researching techniques, learning to decipher charts, and imagining that one day, at a point when a single runaway stitch isn’t a near disaster for my limited skills anymore, one day, I will knit a peacock shawl, in a perfect silk wool blend, with perfectly blended hues of sapphire, emerald, amethyst, and onyx.
This is what I dream about when I am staring off into space, Byram.
Anyway, this morning, Ripple Scarf and I got reacquainted and I spent 2.5 hours at the front desk knitting away, adding probably eight inches to its length. Whew. Only 3.5 feet to go and 13 days to do it in.