Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

3 Comments:

Oooh -- hope you are All Better soon, Dear Bess! I was hit like that by a Mac Truck Fever at the beginning of December -- first time in well over a decade -- so I empathize!

Hugs,

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:01 AM  

Sweetie, I hope your brain has cooled off by the time you read this! Feel better soon!

By Blogger Unknown, at 4:55 PM  

Feel better soon. Being sick is no fun anytime, but it seems so unfair to be sick in the summer!

By Blogger Diann Lippman, at 11:53 PM  

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Thursday, August 21, 2008  

More Lace Thoughts



I'm home sick! Me! In summer! Of all things! Weird fever hit me on Tuesday, though I'd been dragging a bit for a day or so, but it hit me, KaPow, out of the blue. No sore throat or congestion or stomach ache – just 24 hours of cooking at a temperature of 102, along with skeletal ache that kept me waking up every hour or so. I'm better today but I'm wiped out, so I decided to take off the rest of the week. If I am all fixed, all day today, I will go do Family stuff tomorrow as planned. If not, I'll cancel out because I don't want to take germs to an old folks home. I'm not really needed anyway, but my sister feels comforted when I share the load during financial talks.

Funny about fevers, though. You don't really know how sick you are till you try to knit lace while your vision distorts from your heated brain. Yep. I did. At least, I tried to knit a row or two and finally realized I was way too out of it. But here I segue into the knitting stuff and start out with another major Thank You to Clara Parkes for introducing me to Evelyn Clark's book Knitting Lace Triangles. Woo woo I fall more in love with this book every day.

I had been wanting to knit a lace shawl for ever but, being TheQueen, I didn't want to knit anybody else's design. Even if I wanted to, I would find all sorts of reasons why I couldn't use someone else's pattern or else I'd try to change this design feature or that one or tweak it this way or add that to it. Sick. I know. Why I just don't follow instructions I don't know but regardless of the quirks that so distort my reasoning, when someone says “Here is the basic shape, you choose the rest,” my heart is going to glow. This book is so minimalist in text that it's not exactly reading material and yet it's so succinct that I knew it was going to get me through the shawl shoals.

My dear friend K hates lace – and has a compulsion to ravel it when she she sees it. On our Tuesday night gathering I gave it to her. She's a precision sort of person, so I knew she'd return that silky mohair confection delicately rewound. It was so funny to watch her take the thing apart. In the mean time, there was this ball of orange sock yarn that had been sitting by my bed for months. And I'd strung it all with these glass beads. And it was saying it didn't really want to be socks anyway and didn't I want a nice lace shawl of orange flowers with a swingy hem of pale green glass beads and wouldn't it be fun to wear such a design at R's wedding in September and to sniff delicately and say “Oh yes, I made this”? Wouldn't it, huh?

Well, who am I to argue with Orange Lace with Beads, hmm? Besides, this soft springy wool's definition would help me see any errors in my knitting much more easily than that fuzzy silky mohair. I cast on – and then I rediscovered another one of lace's delightful charms. It's fast knitting. Where a sweater to fit me needs 200+ stitches for rows and rows, by the time I get to 200+ stitches on a triangular lace shawl, I'll be done! Wow. And the row gauge!! 10 rows = 2 inches, on size 5 needles!! This is knitting nirvana.

I think I cast this on last weekend. (Honestly, I don't remember. The information was burned away in the fever.) Well, there. I just checked the calender – I did cast-on on Sunday and I'm half way through the 8th repeat!!! This is impressive progress.

So. Today, while I lounge about, recovering my health, I shall knit away. I believe 10 pattern repeats makes a fairly standard shawl. I haven't got any photos because I haven't got any camera yet. I'll have something sooner or later but till then, just picture springy cozy orange wool lace with pale green glass beads. Or what the heck, any other color combination you prefer.

posted by Bess | 8:25 AM
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