What am I going to do with a Lace Shawl, anyway?

Well I had a not so terrible trip back. Edmonton was nice. We stayed with Chrys's Dad. He was very welcoming and generous. Its a lot to ask to accept seven houseguests, four of whom are under seven years old, and two of whom aren't related to you at all. I helped with Easter dinner. I hope that goes some ways towards making it up.

Easter was good. I have a two part, really bad video of Ian hunting Easter eggs, which I will post to You tube in short order. I have a lot of pictures as well. I will be waiting to post those items because I have a new computer coming and I think I will just get all that done at the same time.

As soon as I got home, my computer crashed (possibly internet related; the guy fixed it, it seems to be working for now) And then I got the flu. I am not feeling well right now. However, I do believe it is getting better. So that explains the lack of posts. I know it sounds like I am making excuses, but in all honesty it has been a crazy month and I just want to get back into my routine, which includes knitting and blog posting.

I did get quite a lot of knitting finished: a pair of socks for Robert, a pair of Mittens for my Mom, and she got a pair of dishcloths as well, and one dishcloth for Stacey. There's another one coming, I swear. I also got one Sock from Hell done, and am currently stuck at the heel on Sock from Hell Part Deux. There is nothing wrong with this heel, but the first one took eight (8) attempts to get acceptable (note that I did not say correct.) So I kinda have a complex about doing it all over again. I am placing all the blame on the yarn; the socks for Robert were a very wooly Patons Kroy which clung nicely to itself and stayed in place. These Socks from Hell are made from Arequipa sock yarn, which is silky soft and beautiful. And slippery as hell. When I drop a stitch it runs all over the place and the sides of the heels stretched all out of shape and looked like crap. It was partly my fault. I was following a pattern (assuming pattern people know best) and knitting the heel flap like I was told: sl1, k1 to end on front, sl 1 p to end on back. And the one side looked awful. It wasn't so obvious on previous socks because of the nature of the yarn, but with this one being so slippery, it was very clearly bad. So I pulled it back and tried numerous things, including knitting so tight my hand was cramped up for two days, and nothing worked.

So finally I looked it up on the internet. I had looked before, to no avail. But it turned out I wasn't looking for the right thing. A word had come up in some knitting patterns that had punctured my brain, but since it didn't appear in the pattern I was using I figured it wasn't important. That word was "Selvage". I began to suspect that that word had to do with the edge of knitting, and that it may be the key to my problem. So I looked up "Selvage" and lo and behold, some kind lady on some website said you had to knit the last stitch on the purl row, to make the sides neat. I wonder why they wouldn't put that in a pattern? Sometimes I wonder if there isn't some secret conspiracy to keep all the good knitting tricks to the professionals. Geeze. So anyway, I did that and it worked. It doesn't look great, mind you, but it does look acceptable. And by the way, in my process of reknitting the heel for about the 5th time, Chrys says to me, "why don't you try knitting the last stitch on the purl row?" and I just disregard her because I thought she was just a beginner and I knew better. So I am officially apologizing to her for that. Oops.

Anyhoo. I am just not prepared to go through all that again. But I have to. Because I can't knit anything until I finish that sock. And the list of things to knit is no shorter than before. If anything, its longer.

Which brings me to my newest stash acquisition: Misti Alpaca 100% Baby Alpaca Lace 2 ply... Black. 3 Skeins. I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, it is beautiful yarn. extremely soft and fine. I just want to rub it against my cheek. But I am absolutely intimidated by the idea of lace. I want to make a shawl, I don't want to hurt my brain doing it, but I want it to look pretty, not just a simple feather and fan type pattern. I don't want to sew on any edging. I don't want to pick up 400 odd edge stitches (I'm still shaking from picking up 15 odd heel stitches) and finally, what on earth am I going to do with it when I am done? In all honesty, I will never, ever, ever use a black lace shawl. Not in a million years. I get dressed up maybe once a year. It's usually winter. I live in Canada. Lace shawls are useless against the winter here. So anyway I guess if I do make it, it will be a gift for someone. But I don't know who I can give it to that will be worth the trouble of making it. (not that nobody is worth it, but it is going to be a pretty special event type of gift) I guess somebody will be surprised. I don't know when, I don't know who, and I don't know how, but its going to happen.

But enough about knitting. Who wants to hear about Ian? I think he's made his career choice. He said to me yesterday: "Mommy, and I want to be a maker."

I replied "You want to be a maker?"
"Yes."
"What do you want to make?" I asked.
"Pie" he said.

Since I would love for him to grow up to be a world famous chef with a tv show and a restaurant, I was pretty pleased with this statement. And that way I would have somewhere to wear my lace shawl!

However, fickle are the dreams of a two year old. Today I asked him what he wanted to be, and he said "a balentine!"

So happy Balentines Day everybody. Hope you have some good pie!