My Personal Everest

When I first joined Ravelry back in February, I spent a lot of time looking at patterns and projects that other people were working on. In doing so, I noticed a few trends. There are sock people, Clapotis people, Entrelac people, color work people, and lace people. There are probably a few more people that I can't think of right now, but you get my drift. Most knitters seem attracted to one specific type of knitting over others. They might dip their toes in a different style of project every now and then, but they always return to their favorite.

My "thing" is color work. I like doing stranded knitting. I'm not sure why it appeals to me, but it's a combination of watching the pattern build as I go along and using multiple colors. It interests me and I love the end product. Once I joined Ravelry, however, I suddenly had access to all sorts of different projects that I'd never really thought about before. It turns out that felting runs a close second to color work in terms of enjoyment for me. There's something really satisfying about knitting a large, grossly misshapen object and then watching it magically shrink into its proper shape at the end. Socks are fun because they're highly portable and a quick knit. I've decided I'm going to keep at least one sock on the needles at all times for traveling purposes.

Ravelry also exposed me to techniques that I've never thought about. I taught myself how to knit in the Continental style, learned several different cast ons and increases/decreases and finally get the importance of gauge. Go, me.

Everything has been positive for me except one: lace knitting. It's my personal Everest. I'm a reasonably intelligent woman, I've been knitting for more than 35 years and I can do almost anything I try...except lace. I really suck at lace. It started with the Branching Out scarf. It's so pretty, and Knitty assured me it was an easy lace pattern. Apparently, the Knitty editors have never met someone like me, because that scarf was the bane of my existence for two months. I finally finished it, but I never once made it through a single pattern repeat without have to rip it back. There was also the Reid Sweater. I think I had to frog and cast on that project at least three times, and still haven't gone beyond the first repeat. That project is in the naughty closet so it can learn how to behave.

Despite those set backs, I somehow thought I could knit a lace pattern in lace weight yarn. For those of you not in the know, lace weight yarn is like embroidery floss, only, you know, made out of wool or alpaca or something. Do you see the contradiction here? I can't knit a simple lace pattern from normal sized wool on a size US 8 needle, but I confidently believe I can easily knit a whole stole using thread and toothpick sized needles.

Needless to say, I have not been successful. I picked a lovely stole pattern called Print o'the Wave. I bought gorgeous alpaca lace weight yarn and used my new provisional cast on skills to cast it on. I never made it through a repeat. You know what happens when you knit with lace weight yarn? It looks kind of like a snarly mass. A more talented knitter might be able to frog back a row or two, but if I do it, I can't tell where to pick up the stitches. Also, my bamboo circulars? WAY too dull for lace weight. Of course, I cast on and frogged at least twice before I fully comprehended these facts.

I went on Ravelry. I carefully read through various tips for lace knitting. Did you look at the stole I'm knitting? The end product is so beautiful, it kept me working on the project. I learned that using Post-it notes on the chart will keep you on track. I read that Addi lace circulars are key to easy knitting. I also learned that threading a "life-line" through a row you know is correct will prevent you from having to frog all the way to the beginning due to the impossibility of seeing the stitches. Frog down to the thread and pick up the stitches! Whee!

I cast on again, worked the first row and threaded in the life line. This way, there is no chance I'll have to redo the somewhat cumbersome provisional cast on again. Go, me. I knit a few rows, counted every stitch across the purl rows and made it to Row 7 of the chart. I finally got my lace Addis, but I was so exhausted from all the frogging and painstaking counting that I just wasn't up to working on the project any more. Everything went into the project bag and I put it aside for two months.

I knit a pair of socks with a lace pattern with relatively few problems. Hey, sock weight yarn isn't that much thicker than lace weight yarn, so maybe I'm getting better! I worked out my own lace pattern for a pair of socks and am knitting merrily along on those. I think I'm ready for the stole again.

Yesterday I made a bunch of pretty little stitch markers. I came up with a plan to mark the end of each pattern repeat across the row so that I would know where each section starts in the event that something went wrong and I needed to count stitches. I pulled out the stole at 5 pm and worked a row to put it on the Addis. The knitting went so much more smoothly! I zoomed through rows 8-12, and on Row 13...disaster. Something was terribly wrong. Counting back did not reveal the mistake, so I knew I had to frog. Sadly, I didn't think to move up the life-line at any point, so I had to frog back to the VERY FIRST ROW.

I started up again. I thought to myself, this is actually a good thing because now I'm knitting on the really good needles and I can make sure my tension is more even. It will actually make the finished project look better.

I knit three rows and frogged back to the first row. I knit five rows and frogged back to the first row. I knit 6 rows and thought "Ha ha! I'm going to move the life line so that I can actually make progress!" Smart move, no? I also thought "I'm going to leave in the original life line just in case!" Good plan.

Here's where everything went wrong. Instead of spending the 1 minute it would take to look through my bag for more thread, I just pulled the bottom life line out a bit and cut it in half. There was plenty of extra thread hanging out both sides. I put in the second life line and knit up to row 11. Something went wrong. No problem, life line!

I ripped back to the second life line and noticed that it had pulled through the last 20 stitches or so. Good thing I have the first life line as a back up. Except that my first life line has also pulled through about a quarter of the stitches. It dawned on me that I was going to have to rip back the entire stole again and do another provisional cast on. I frogged the stole, rewound the yarn and put the whole thing back into the project bag.

When Jim came home from his guys' night out, I said "Do you want to see all the work I did on my stole between 5pm and 11pm?" I pulled out the empty lace needles. Jim said "Not going to well, huh?"