I thought and thought long and hard about my next lace project. I even canvassed opinions from the sage and erudite knitters here at Seasons of Lace. I pondered, procrastinated, and pondered some more. I leafed through every book I possess, studied every stitch pattern I could find, and perused every lace pattern known to Ravelry. I even went so far as to sort the stash, carefully separating out all my laceweight yarn and corralling it into a small pen of its own. I took one look at all that pretty, skinny stuff and immediately abandoned it in favor of my sock weight stash, rushing off to contemplate, corral and fondle that for a bit instead.
Then I made a critical mistake. I bought a spinning wheel. Not only did this provide me with many hours of entertainment with nary a decision to be made (‘which roving – of the approximately three or four I possess – shall I sacrifice next?’ constitutes only a minor challenge to a well-oiled over-thinking machine such as myself). It provided me with a Plan. A plan so breathtakingly overweaning and staggeringly unreasonable that I can hardly bring myself to share it with you.
You may have worked it out already. I thought: ‘handspun!‘
Oh yes. Seriously. Having never spun anything before, I somehow conceived an image in my mind (which is where it very firmly stays) of enough handspun laceweight yarn to screw up my next lace project even more spectacularly that my last one. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Perhaps I should not mention that this mythical yarn was, in addition to its other charms, intended to be two-ply. So I dyed up one hundred grams (yup, a whole three and a half ounces) of Bluefaced Leicester and carefully spun it into, oh, a good 180 yards of worsted. I did this twice. And then I got a lucky break. A kind Ravelry friend sent me a skein of utterly beautiful fingering weight singles in a color that begged me to please, just for once, cut the crap and cast on immediately, which I did, Knitty having graciously provided pattern inspiration while I was still occupied working out which way up the damned spinning wheel went.
So I’ve scaled back my ambitions, and I’m very gratefully plugging away at the endearingly small (400 yards!) lace-edged piece of cuteness that is Annis. It has only 18 rows of lace (including the wrong side rows) and yet it has nupps! Yes, nupps! And it decreases in size, which is perfect if you ask me (less to go wrong with every row? Sign me right up.) In all truth, if I had only started it sooner than three days ago, I’d even have had a half-decent chance of finishing it before the end of the ‘Season’. Well, however hard I kid myself, I don’t think that’s going to happen now, but I’m able to make the breathless progress announcement that -
halfway through row three (yes, 3), the stitch count still seems to be intact.
So it seems I’ve learned something this season after all, and whether that is how to count, or how to tink will be my little secret. I think I may have shared enough for one day.
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