I have been knitting a little baby blanket--lace, knitted from the center. I like patterns like this that start small and get bigger as you go. I was following the pattern, diligently doing each yarn-over and decrease stitch where the pattern said. And then I hit trouble. This always happens with lace. I follow the pattern and then after a few inches look back at what a pretty thing I am making. But it turns out that it really really helps if you understand the purpose of each stitch so that when things go terribly wrong, and if you're knitting lace they can't help but go wrong at some point (just forgetting one yarn over can cause quite a mess), you can fix them. After tinking* a couple rows, I felt like I was in a place to go forward again. And this time I looked at the pattern, how it repeated, and how each stitch was functioning in the fabric. What do you know. The knitting is going faster and I have lost that little tug of fear that comes when I look up to watch my little niece that the whole thing will have gone completely wrong when I look back down at the knitting. I suppose this is a little life lesson for myself. Look at the pattern, respect the structure, don't sweat the details.
And I just have to mention that Emily said the greatest thing to me last night. We were headed to my sister's house which is about a 30 minute drive away. She said, "And I will drive because that is an hour of knitting." Could you ask for a better spouse?
*"tinking" is knitting backwards. You can't just pull the needles out and rip if you're doing lace because for me, the mess would be unrecoverable. So you have to unknit, one stitch at a time. TINK = KNIT backwards.
 |
| Lace Blanket from 60 More quick Baby Knits |
And I just have to mention that Emily said the greatest thing to me last night. We were headed to my sister's house which is about a 30 minute drive away. She said, "And I will drive because that is an hour of knitting." Could you ask for a better spouse?
*"tinking" is knitting backwards. You can't just pull the needles out and rip if you're doing lace because for me, the mess would be unrecoverable. So you have to unknit, one stitch at a time. TINK = KNIT backwards.