My first choice was this beautiful and intricate creation I found in "Victorian Lace". It was one of those lace patterns that you have to do something on every row. This involves purling two together and slip slip purling. These are not fun or relaxing stitches especially when you are left handed, reading the pattern backward, and have an unusual way of wrapping your yarn which makes stitches face the wrong way. I gave up. It was too hard and too much work.
I have never ever said this about knitting before. I've given up because a project wasn't turning out the way I wanted or I was bored or I got a better idea. I have never found knitting too hard. I annoy other knitters with my constant "try it, it's easy" or "you can knit anything you want to, I'll show you how easy it is". Knitting has never daunted me; it's intrigued me or made me study it to see how it was done but I have never stopped because it was too hard. I was humbled by a silly lace pattern.
To get my courage back, I searched out another really hard lace pattern but one that you only have to do stuff on every other row. This gives you a row to catch your breath (and any mistakes you made on the previous row). It also gives you the opportunity to look up and maybe talk to another human being (lace knitting can be very anti-social).
There are three kinds of lace: the easy kind where it takes one pattern repeat to memorize it and you never have to look at the chart again, medium lace where it takes several pattern repeats to memorize it and you have to keep the chart handy just in case, and hard lace where you have to be some type of savant to memorize the pattern and the chart goes everywhere with you.
My new pattern was definitely the latter but I would not give up again. I ripped out I don't know how many rows. I counted stitches every other row to make sure I still had them all with me. I knitted in silence (not even listening to a book on tape) for the first two pattern repeats and then suddenly I GOT IT.
I'm not sure when it happened but I could recognize when to yarn over and when to knit two together. I could tell immediately when I was off by a stitch and I stopped holding my breath at the end of every row hoping beyond hope that I would end up with the right amount of stitches for the border.
I got cocky. I took it out in public. I knit while watching a dvd. I carried on conversations. It was finally fun. Then, of course, I made a mistake and had to rip back a couple of rows and was humbled once again.
Then the bad news came. My LYS was closing up shop, going out of business after four years. We were all devastated and I had this very expensive skein of yarn that I was finally enjoying knitting and I was going to actually get the sample done before all the yarn sold. I ask Audra, the owner, what she wanted me to do with the yarn now. "Merry Christmas" she said.
So now this sample is going to be a scarf and I'm almost done and if I only had another skein of the yarn I might even get the pattern memorized (but I kinda doubt it). It's hard knitting but damn, it sure does look good now.
