Here I am!

The new year begins. And with that, I share with you some of my goals for the new year.


1) knit something lace. without getting the random, abstract holey-patterns.

2) Write an actual knitting pattern.

3) de-stash. This means: no new yarn, unless I absolutely need it. I think some of my dream projects may need to take a back-burner for a little while. And some people may get some lovely yarn as a result of de-stashing.



















And this is my attempt at #1:

I've always said that I hated knitting lace. The reason is that I end up with holes in all the wrong places and can't quite figure out how to get back to a place where I should be. But after seeing the scarf that someone in my group made for her secret scarf pal, I was inspired. I loved this pattern so much (Brooke's Column of Leaves) that I just had to try it. When I went to see my friend NK a few days after Christmas, her grandma took us to this yarn store (Birds of a Feather), where I saw this sparkly yarn. And you know how much I LOVE sparkly. So of course, I had to get it...and was wondering the entire time what I was going to do with dark grey sparkly yarn. Make a lace scarf, of course!

And while I spent a few hours knitting the first 12 rows repeatedly, ending up with the wrong number of stitches and holes in the wrong places, I frogged them and started over again. I'll admit that the first rows aren't perfect, but after a while I can handle it. As for memorizing the pattern, no way can I do that! My memory is starting to get patchy now, and for me to memorize a knitting pattern where I have to keep track of yarn overs, decreases...yeah, right. But it has gotten to the point when I can sort of watch TV and knit at the same time. Ok, I can "watch" the TV commercials and knit at the same time. The first few rows, I had to talk myself through the pattern. Anyone who would have happened upon me would have heard: "slip one, knit two. one, two. Slip, knit, pass slipped stitch over...yarn over...knit two. One, two. Purl two. One, two. Knit seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...okay. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Knit two together. Yarn over...where am I? Yarn over...no, I did that..." and you get the idea, right till the end, where I say to myself, "Yarn over, knit four, slip one...One, two, three, four...huh? I missed a stitch somewhere? Great, I have to start over again."















This other scarf is the Vogue anniversary scarf, with 25 individual flowers. While the scarf and flowers are not difficult to knit, the process of weaving in all the ends is quite tedious. If I do this again...hmm. If ever, I will make sure I have lots of time to weave in ends. This scarf went to my secret pal in my SnB group exchange.