Tuesday, April 17, 2007

I Don't Know Why They Call Me Ruthless . . .

Today tastes like lamb with a nice blueberry/green peppercorn curry. And tiramisu. With some powerful coffee with licorice, chocolate, and cream.

I am the boss of my knitting.

Ok, back up for some background. At the beginning of the year, I had started a lace stole for me. I seldom WEAR lace stoles. There's a reason stoles are often photographed around the shoulders of taut young decorative women and aging pissy divas.

Stoles are pretty, but useless. They don't keep anything warm. They aren't wide enough to heat your whole torso unless you can wrap them around and around your skinny little self.

Stoles are pretty, but tempermental. At the worst possible moment (one hand filled with red wine in a glass, the other holding a plate of tomato-sauced pasta) your white angora stole is going to decide you aren't paying enough attention to it, and will promptly unwrap itself and make a dive for the floor, clinging to your ankles. Do you (a) gracefully fold in half, balancing the food and drink until you can set it on the floor to re-dress yourself; (b) drop the wine or the food on the hostess's new cream Berber rug; (c) spill the wine or food onto the stole, praying that they dyepot will save it well enough to continue to wear; or (d) all of the above?

So I got to this point, about two and a half feet in.




And then I stopped for a while, tempted by a number of other projects. This is usually a warning sign. If I'm knitting for me, and decide I'd rather do something else, well, it's usually a sign. Generally, that decision is preceded by four equestrian gentlemen, one of whom rides a palomino. This bodes not well for the red stole.

And well, last night I pulled this out to work on. Two stitches in, I was planning something else, and I realized the Time Had Come.



Fifteen minutes later, we were back to the beginning.

I like the stitch patterns the original designer had chosen. I like the way they work together, I liked working them. It was just the shape of things to come that was getting in the way.

I love this about knitting. I love that if I accidentally knit two left fronts, I can just zizz the yarn out to where the shaping begins, and re-work it. I love that if something stops inspiring me, I can tear it out and try again. If only sewing worked the same way--if you could just rip and re-cut when you had two left sleeves in the $99.00 per yard challis that you bought the last 3 yards of for That Jacket. The one that takes two and a half-yards to lay out. So you bought an extra half-yard so you'd have some room to match motifs at the seams . . .

I've re-assembled the pattern in a way that pleases me. I'll link up what I did under the freebie section once I have a final shawl to show.

Woo-hooo! I may be going backwards right now (and until I've knit back to the same point in yarn use) but after this little siderail, we'll be going forward to a destination I think I'll like better.

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