Lace Urges

Here’s the thing.  I knitted Icarus. I patted myself on the back. I blogged about it. I emailed photos of it.  I blabbed incessently about it.  Basically, I O.D.ed on it.  It was so much fun.  I really just want to knit another lace shawl now.  Or maybe not a shawl, but some other lace thing that will knock my own socks off when I finish it.  I’m having lace urges. So many urges that I’m looking at shawl porn daily on ravelry.  I just cannot help myself.  I’m just so drawn to it.   It wouldn’t be so bad it if weren’t for this yarn diet I keep telling myself I’m on.  I am really attempting to de-stash this year.  I’m doing pretty well so far, but with no lace weight in the stash, I have a problem.  Hmmmm.  I could hurry up and spin some, but see, the lace shawl urge is happening NOW, not in a week or three when the hand spun yarn would be ready to use.  I just need to settle down.  I have socks on the needles, they could keep me happy for awhile, and the urge will pass, right? Maybe, but I NEED to start a new lace project, and soon.  I think, “Strike while the iron is hot” is great advice, indeed!

What about a nice swap?  I have oodles of worsted brunswick wool yarn just sitting in totes waiting to be loved.  I always imagined the felted slippers, hats, bags, mittens, and other yummy winter delights I could knit with the 15 skeins I have purchased through the years on discount.  If I swapped yarns with someone, does that still count as stash-busting?  I think so.  But could I part with it?  I’m a bit attached to my stash yarns.  Even the ugly yarns I bought as a beginning knitter make me think of the project that I originally imagined that will never be.  And how would I feel with no stash yarn?  What if I could actually use up all the yarn I’m storing? Then what, I just buy yarn for every project as I need to?  But isn’t that why I bought all that yarn to start with, so I wouldn’t have to do that?  And if I run out of yarn, that means I can start rebuilding the stash, right?  So in the end, when I die, I will still have craploads of yarn.  So maybe I’ll just order up that lace weight right now.

Icarus Mission Accomplished

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I can’t believe I’m even typing this.  I am actually finished with the Icarus Shawl.  I am just beaming, can you feel the rays from there? I know I’m a bit behind the Icarus Bandwagon, I was left in their dust at least a year ago. I’m not even sure how it happened. In the fall of ‘06 I knitted about 70 rows, ran out of yarn, I blinked, then about 14 months went by before I picked it up again.  Here’s what I learned from this project:

1. Lace charts suck.

1A. Breathing when knitting lace is a good thing.

1B. Hunching over knitting until my neck hurt for three days requiring Vicodin isn’t fun.

1C. Post it notes on the knitting pattern denoting RS symbols and WS symbols are a time saver. (did I mention lace charts suck?)

2. Never again will I assume I’ll remember what the hell I was doing when I had to put the project down.  I will always write knitterly notes to myself as if I’m planning to develop Alzheimer’s before I get back to it.

3. Always, always, always buy more yarn than you think you’ll need to finish, especially if you use heavier yarn, DUH. (hence the reason I ran out of yarn after 70 rows.) Buying form a LYS rather than an online store would have helped too.

4. Say extra prayers daily for the kind hearted knitter (whose name I forgot) in Canada who graciously sent me two skeins of yarn matching the dye lot I needed. Are knitters great folks or what?  (I really hope she liked the soap I sent her in return!)

5.  Although K’Nex toy blue circle gizmos make great stitch markers, it’s a good idea to  invest in oodles of stitch markers for lace because I lost a zillion of the real markers I started with on this project.  also, the ones that come apart would have made this project soooo much easier.

6. Buy an Ott style craft lamp.  This dark yarn made me a basketcase. 

7. Buy lace addi-turbos. Sheesh. This was my first experience with regular addis and loved them, but this was alpaca/silk yarn and it was way too slippery for these needles, also, they’re not pointy enough.

8. Lace is very rewarding, especially when it’s a yummy alpaca shawl I can drape around my shoulders!  I absolutely cannot wait to wear it.  It’s blocking at this very minute!!

9. Sacrifice at least a dozen skeins of crappy acrlic yarn from my stash to offer thanksgiving to the lace goddess.  She was so kind to me.  It really is the least I can do.  I am eternally grateful.  For the most part, this project went off without a hitch (after the running out yarn incident, which was my own stupid fault).  It seemed at the start that I was biting off way more than I could chew with this pattern, but I took it one step at a time, ripped every time it started to go awry, and just kept plugging along.  I really did learn a tremendous amount from this project, and isn’t that really what it’s all about??