Am I missing the point?

OK, will someone please explain lace knitting to me. I have determined that I am pretty much a process knitter, but this is ridiculous. Way back in the mists of time (well, last February) I started a Daisy Meadow shawl. A "beginner" lace project. I'm a beginner, so, ok. After ripping and reknitting every single row at least twice, I made it this far before I had to walk away.

A few weeks later I decided to pick it up again and spent an entire day knitting, ripping and reknitting chart 4. At the end of the day I had made it this far.

Before I admitted defeat. I don't know what it is about chart 4 that is so bad, but I couldn't get past it for love nor money. So back into its ziploc it went and aged several more months before I could stand to look at it again.

The problem is that I love the idea of knitting lace. The designs and the yarns are unbelievably beautiful, and I dream of knitting a Tina shawl or a Forest Path stole. Really. I have the patterns and I pull them out and look fondly at them and look toward the day I'll know enough to cast them on.

At least I used to feel that way. Until yesterday.

So I decided I'd pick up the scarf after another multi month hiatus and give it a go. I knitted the roughly 900 stitches of chart 4 4 times before nearly breaking down into tears. Not girly tears, not tears of sorrow, failure or remorse, but those special tears of frustration that say I know deep down in my heart that there isn't enough weapons grade plutonium on this planet to make a bomb big enough for my personal needs right now and that is why I cry. Oh, people, what is this lace knitting about?

Last row chart 4 I am one stitch short. Always. I think I find an error. Always. I tink back to fix it being very careful not to foul up tinking the fiddly bits. I begin to reknit, find a dropped stitch. I think. It looks like a yarn over, but that's not possible, last row was all knit. This happens in different spots, I think, but it is always the same. Picking up the stitch will make the number of stitches come out right. I pick it up. I knit. The lace pattern is off. I am somehow still one stitch short. And I seem to have a short column of stitches now where I picked up the alleged dropped stitch. Always. I look close, see where the error obviously started. Shouldn't have picked up that thing I thought was a stitch. Go back and undo to before I "fixed" it, but it doesn't look the same. See the obvious error. Fix it. Lose another internal stitch in the column of stitches and at end of the row I am still a stitch short. Always happens just like this. If I continue, I will eventually end up with a really short and mangled section in the internal lace structure and will never recover the 1 stitch I am short. Rip back to lifeline. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So for many hours work yesterday, I was finally able to achieve this:

I don't get it.

All work and no play makes me order stuff on the internet.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Between the pollen making my asthma flare up and work being its usual crazy self, not much knitting progress has occurred. In anticipation ofI have ordered some undyed Opal to play with. Hopefully I will be able to make the sign up even though I'll be out of town and nowhere near internet access this weekend. Oh well, if I don't make it, I'll still play with dyeing, and that's the point.

I have also been on a pattern buying binge that really has to stop. I think I have a pattern stash that will soon exceed the yarn stash, but when I don't get to actually knit, this is the sort of thing that happens. So it is my bosses' fault. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Meanwhile in "the Birch is going nowhere" news, little overall progress has been made, but I have finally figured out what went wrong the first time I tried it. First, I am a loose knitter, second, I knit looser in Continental than in English. The first attempt didn't make it past the 1st repeat, when I found my yarn overs were making holes big enough for the cats to crawl through. So I had to frog it completely and cast on again, and let me tell you I don't ever want to frog KSH again. Oh, no, next time I am buying an extra ball and just cutting that mess off. I am now knitting Birch perfectly, and the secret is to knit English and choke the living *#^! out of the needles with tight stitches. Probably it would have worked just fine going down a needle size or twelve (the holes were huge, I tell you, huge!)but I must do things the hard way sometimes.

And now, I give you my favorite plant in the whole world - my lotus. Last year's happy baby plant. Now that it has been repotted and it's in the pond, it should be ginormous. Oh, and the Eglu gets ordered soon. I have been chicken free for too long.

Chapter 12: I am driven to madness

I know I went too far. The finishing of all the projects before the due date, coupled with too much beer and repeated watching of the awesome "unpimp your ride" VW commercials combined synergistically to unbalance my brain, and when it came time to cast back on, suddenly the instruction to "cast on 299 stitches" didn't seem unreasonable to me at all.

But it isn't my fault, (it never is, you will soon come to learn about me) it is Eunny and Monkee's faults. Poor Eunny, she doesn't even know me, but I would swear she timed her awesome lace tutorial just to catch me at my most vulnerable. Just like Lolly got me all excited about socks, Eunny has taken advantage of my impaired state to hook me on lace for good. Even though I am sucking at it at the moment, I am loving it. And Monkee spreading all these great lace vibes around the place. Ladies, the damage is done. Lace is the new sock.

I like to call this "Still life with Birch, HP and Cat Butt"

In continuing sock madness news, however, even as I am inching fearfully forward to casting on the 2 color turkish socks, I must tell you a tale of frustration. A little while ago I saw these socks on Claudia's blog. Candy socks. Delicious. Had to have.

I have learned a lot about the self patterning sock business since this whole thing started. About the evils of limited runs, and the equally nasty ways shops lure you in with promises of wonderful self patterning color ranges only to produce large piles of grey, brown, black, and greybrown yuk they haven't been able to unload over the past humpteen years. In desperation, and in the throes of a creativity streak that had me designing candy purses to go along with my socks, I wrote Claudia asking for help. She was very kind and gracious, especially considering that I must have come across as a complete lunatic, and she shared her source as well as some other places to start my search. Nice lady, talented as all get out, too.

You know how it is once you have your mind set on something. After several attempts to purchase from various online sources only to receive an email of regret followed by removal of the item from their online catalogues, I was on a freaking mission from God to track down the last Trekking XXL Color 126 on this planet. And because when I am on said mission I am as stubborn as a mule on crack, it was inevitable that I triumphed.

Now, I'd like to say that tracking this yarn to a shop in Berlin is not even a little extreme, but I would be lying if I did so. I think I have gone round the bend, twist or any other metaphor I can think of, as long as it means I am completely mental. And I am having a hell of a time denying it. I had to pay for my yarn in freaking Euros. EUROS. But I am happy. Is that wrong?