Oh My Lace!!!!!

Ahhh lace, the art of making pretty holes. If only I could put them in the flipping right places!!!!! I have only been seriously knitting for about a year and a half (not so seriously since the 8th grade) and I desperately love every kind I have encountered thus far. I was the kind that went straight from scarves to socks with very little trouble; okay my gussets were atrocious, but who looks at the gusset? Anyway, I wanted to attempt a lace project and, being the naive and oh-so-attracted-to-nature-inspired-knits person that I am, I took the suggestion of other teenage knitters and chose a scarf pattern called Branching Out (courtesy of knitty.com). I casted on with no fear.....and soon found myself in a world of much grring and knashing of teeth. 

For those unfamiliar with lace, it is basically adding systematically placed yarn overs in and among your regular knits and purls. The problem is, unlike other kinds of knitting, if you do not have the correct stitch count by the end of the row, you cannot just go back in on the next row and create or annihilate the offending stitch. It destroys the pattern and will make your supposedly artfully placed holes look like, well, less than artfully placed holes. I am on edge for every row, carefully following the pattern, trying very hard not to expect the worst, and then hold my breath for every time I count the stitches, praying there will be the right amount.

So why soldier on with it? Even my dear co-blogger, after witnessing a rather nasty outburst on my part, said forcefully, "Just put it down!" As much as this frustrates me, I can't put it down. Nor can I keep myself from buying laceweight and oggling patterns of beautiful holes in such nice arrangements. I do not walk away from a challenge simply because I cannot surmount it within the first few repeats. What kind of knitter would that make me? I'll tell you what it would make me; a cheap yarn floozey who only sticks to awful pilly yarn and runs at the first sign of a yarn over. Not me, dear friends. I will not allow a little frustration and some creative curses (snark-ended guttersnipe being my favorite) keep me from my goal of a lovely artfully holy scarf.