Tour de France started last night and so did my first foray in lace knitting. I have taken my lovely Kelim laceweight and starting with the easy lace from VLT with the Centre Rectangle with diamond pattern.

I got my head around the invisible cast-on, thanks to the instructions and that went quite well. But attempt #1, I didn’t read the chart properly and had not been purling on the wrong side. Rip back, invisible cast-on…knit away, then a particularly interesting moment in The Bill distracted me and I got to the end of the row with not enough stitches. left for the chart So I unknit the row and called it a night.

Now I have been besotted with my knitting before…whole evenings, even weekends, disappear like that *click*. But this lace knitting stuff seems like the ultimate in time suck. That little bit more concentration makes the hours whizz by! Lucky I have another lazy Sunday ahead of me, with the rain threatening outside…perfect to snuggle up on the couch and continue this lace.

I almost called this “the uncertainty of new things” until I had a J.Timberlake moment. Ok, so I am by no means a prize winning knitter. I try my best, give it a good crack and as in life, let those little mistakes go by (pretend they never happened and no one else will notice). But I am looking at this “lace knitting” sitting on the end of my Addis and it looks just like a mass of thread. I look back to the picture of beauteous red mohair lusciousness that I trying to replicate and my WIP looks nothing like that.

I know, I know…I have read and heard people speak (btw I am sole knitting practitioner! I have learnt all from books & internet) about the lace and how it looks like nothing until you block it. But mine really looks like nothing! Am I doing it right? Do I have to wait til I finish and block it to find the mistakes? After getting my confidence in other knitting, making some half decent socks and a jumper, I am now back at step 1 feeling like I know nothing. I got some knitting insecurity. It’s scary, but fun. The inner control freak will just have to let go and see how this one turns out…

Other knittery things this week…

  • copy of EZ’s Knitter’s Almanac arrived in the post. What a lovely little book. I don’t usually have knitting books besides my bed, but the patterns intertwined with anecdotes of her adventures in knitting and her cottage in the woods. making in perfect bed reading. My initial thoughts are that this will not be a pattern book per se for me (not cold enough here for mittens but they are damned cute & I can’t see myself knitting t-shirts), but more of a reference book to learn the tricks that EZ uncovered. I am wanting to try out the Pi shawl…sheesh where is my Ravelry account, so I can organise my projects! Waiting ,waiting, waiting for that email…apparently me & 9800 other rabid knitters.
  • Melbourne Scarf Festival has been on. I snuck a look at the exhibition yesterday (last day). There were some beautiful hand spun, hand dyed scarfs, felted and some kooky arty type stuff. The nice thing is that you can handle all the scarves, touch the yarn, feel the stitches, look and wonder…how did they do that? The curators did a great job exhibiting the scarves together by colour, selection of blues, pinks, silver/gray/blacks. I went last year as a truly newbie knitter and with another year in knitting education under my belt, I was able to identify stitches, yarns, styles etc. I felt like a proper knitter! Maybe I will enter next year, maybe!
  • Up to the toe decreases in my first Jaywalker!

I need to go and buy a digital camera….