No Grace with Lace

“Insanity runs in my family, practically gallops!” – Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace

Tigger and his shadow,
both in dire need of grooming

It’s a beautiful sunny day here on the Gulf Coast, although a bit chilly.  I won’t complain though, since I know my family up in Ohio and Indiana got at least 3 inches of snow overnight.  I’ll take the chill, thanks.  My dogs love when it’s sunny out and one in particular spent the morning appreciating the sunshine – by attacking his own shadow.  Not kidding.  The dog is weird.

I really don’t know why he’s so fascinated with light but he has been ever since we got him as a puppy.  Whenever he is chasing shadows or a shimmer of light, you could bring a dozen pit bulls into the yard and he’d barely notice.  

He becomes completely single minded, which is what I should have been while working on my lace project with my pink Alpaca Lace…

Unfortunately, I was not paying as much attention as I should have been on row 54.  That’s right.  Not row 6 or row 12 or even row 22 – bloody row 54.  There was nothing spectacular or difficult about row 54.  I simply had to count 26 knit stitches in a row.  Apparently, this was too much for me, because I managed to knit 27 stitches, then did some lace pattern work and ended up a stitch short in the sequence.  I’m not really sure how I managed what happened next, but as I was tinking back to fix it, I dropped a stitch. Not a simple knit stitch either.  I dropped something while trying to un-knit a s2kp with lace weight fuzzy alpaca.  Suddenly I had a hole where there shouldn’t be one.  Not a pretty lace hole but rather an, “oh crap, it looks like I cut the thing” hole.  I didn’t recognize any of the stitches below the hole to even try and pick it back up.  Great lamentation ensued, and then…

I ripped it all out.  Sigh…

Whoever said 6^th time’s a charm??  Uh, wait…nobody.

Believe it or not, I am more determined than ever that I shall NOT be defeated by lace.  This is either an incredibly brave and admirable thing to do, or an incredibly masochistic, insane, and sick thing to do, but either way, by golly, I refuse to give up.  Yes, I’m just that stubborn.

Yesterday evening, I cast on the same pattern, Spider Silk by Holly Chayes, which is actually a very easy pattern if you’re actually attentive enough not to make idiot mistakes.  This time I used my black Alpaca Lace, just to make things interesting, and also because I’m totally hacked at the pink lace at the moment for chipping away at my sanity – I’m sure it was intentional and personal.  I’ll show that pink lace…

Back in Black

I’m back up to row 35.  I am paying attention.  I am in need of therapy…or arsenic.

***  ***  ***