Keeping my sanity

[vaneramos]

I am immersed in writing my longest article yet, 2,500 words. It is science-rich. I am working slowly ensure everything is clearly understandable and accurate. Flow is important, too, but for tonight I just want to get everything down. I can shuffle pieces in the morning. It is due tomorrow.

For breaks I resort to knitting the handspun shawlette. This is for my guild's lace study group. It is intense, too, but in a different way, a good counterbalance to writing. The initial cast-on was 273 stitches. It takes me 30-40 minutes to knit one row with all the lace work, 15 minutes to purl across the back. On my first attempt I knitted 11 rows, almost this far, before realizing I could not tolerate a mistake in the third row, so I ripped it all out and started again. I knitted two other lace pieces several years ago now, but this is much more complicated. Doing it with my first large skein of handspun is especially satisfying.

Here is the original skein, but photos do not bring out the iridescence of some of the colour flecks.

Comments

And is there a pattern

[(Anonymous)]

for this lace piece, or are you inventing as you go?

Re: And is there a pattern

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It's called peacock shawlette by Kitman Figueroa and is available as a Ravelry download.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

(admires the lace) I still haven't worked up the nerve to do proper lacework.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It's a bit of a challenge. And it's harder to hide or compensate for errors. In regular knitting I just tend to add a stitch if I need one, but in this case if I find a stitch missing, it has probably already messed up the pattern somewhere. So it forces me to be fussier than usual, which is not necessarily a bad exercise. For me. Because in most activities I tend toward carelessness rather than obsession.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

(snorts) Lace: the knitting for OCD.

(Oh, and congratulations on the article too!)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Submitted it to the editor just now. Phew! It was fascinating and satisfying, but I'm glad to have finished that stage. I expect she will have some questions and possible rewriting for me to address tomorrow.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Good editor.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like her.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

For example, the thickness of this handspun yarn is all over the place, but I love this quirkiness.

variably thick handspun yarn

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

i can see that being interesting in a lace!