Wednesday, April 16, 2008

In Need Of Direction

I find myself adrift in a sea of yarn, lacking any real direction in the midst of it all. I just looked at my stash on Ravelry… 10,962 yards of various lace yarns… that’s 32,886 feet, which is about 6.23 miles.

I think that bears repeating: I have 6.23 miles of lace-weight yarn.

What the heck?

OK then, let’s take a look at my library, shall we? Ah, three books dedicated to lace knitting, along with lace patterns in several other books. We’re not even going to talk about all the lace projects in my queue. Clearly I am obsessed.

But when I look at my projects I see one single lace shawl, which has been stalled two or three times.

I feel stuck, somehow swamped with all the potential and incapable of starting anything. I want to knit lace. I keep buying the yarns and the books, keep queue-stalking my friends and keep saying “someday.”

I’m thinking it may be time to stop talking about “someday” and start talking about actual knitting projects on my actual needles. Time to stop sighing and mooning and actually make things with my hands.

First things first, I’m going to rescue my mother’s Candle Flame Shawl from the zip lock bag, tink back that row I screwed up so badly about a month ago, take some pictures of it and actually finish the darned thing. It’d sure be nice for mom to be able to wear it to the opening night of the symphony, wouldn’t it?

Then I’m going to tackle the patterns in Victorian Lace Today. It’s a wonderful book, given to my as a birthday gift by the sublime essjay. High time I started using it instead of dreaming over it.

I think that by the time I work my way through the projects Jane Sowerby collected, I’ll either be a reasonably accomplished journeyman lace-knitter or I’ll know that lace just isn’t for me.

Will you come with me? Will you encourage me when I get stuck and laugh with me over the inevitable disasters? Will you hold your breath with me while I try some crazy new technique and marvel with me when I block things? Will you poke at me when I’m trying to pretend I don’t have anything interesting to knit?

Come watch me tangle myself in lace yarn, it should be fun.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

If nothing else, I'll be the one poking you!

:kram:

essjay said...

I,too, absolutley LOVE lace patterns and drool over them but I've never done anything super complex and I want to. There is way to much to knit and way to little time :( Pull that candle flame back out and get going NOW!! :hugs:

Stiney said...

Only if you promise to poke me to work on Hanami more often. Except that I only have the brain power for simple stuff lately. At least I'm on a roll with my Tilted Duster, then.

Lia said...

At least at this point, you've shown that lace is your friend!

I haven't dared knit with lace-weight yarn. I've thought of double-knitting with it (what I don't know; I'm just enamoured with the idea!)