Why else would I be off to the yarn store before I start the EZ baby sweater from the Knitter’s Almanac (my first Zimmermania project) when I’ve already swatched a nice Patons merino? Perfectly soft, perfectly pink (the sweater is for a baby girl due at the end of December), the gauge came out just fine…. I mean, something like this might happen:
Which, obviously, it did.
Beautiful yarn, beautiful to work with, even when I’m doing annoying things like ripping out my first attempt at the lace pattern which starts after the garter stitch yoke. I lost count of how many times I counted stitches last night after doing the first two rows of the pattern. The sweater has a border of 4 garter stitches, and I came up with five at the end of the first row of the lace stitches. Counted the stitches. Counted sets of stitches in the lace repeats. Stared at the thing until my eyes crossed. Tinked back about two dozen stitches to a slightly suspicious spot, and re-knit. Nope. Put it down and went to bed, silently invoking the lace gnomes.
Oddly enough, the stitch count was still wrong when I got to pick the sweater up again this afternoon. And so: out slides the needle (Oh yeah, the Addi Turbo circular count around here is one higher than it used to be, since that same shopping trip) and a little tug on the yarn, and I find myself amazed both at the distinct “pop” each stitch makes as I undo it, and even more so at how the newly exposed loops just stand there, waiting to be scooped back up. I am loving this well behaved yarn.
So tonight I try the lace again – the pattern’s not complicated at all, but given that the only lace I’ve done before this is that cotton dishcloth last week, it ought to be challenging enough.
I was looking over last year’s calendar, trying to spot the day last fall when my friend Wendy handed me those first skeins of yarn and set me on my way. Couldn’t find it, but it must have been somewhere about now. It’s been a good year.