Lifeline
So my sewing class was abruptly suspended because of a massive bug that damn near felled me over the last couple of weeks. I was sick like I have never been, and the pieces of cloth are still waiting, all cut and marked, to be worked over into something wearable. My father swears it’s the sewing machine that did it – it is true, the foot-pedal thingie looks easier than it actually is, especially for a novice – but I think it was something a lot more devious than a rattling piece of metal. I don’t know if it was the delirium from the fever or the fact that the blessed monsoon has STILL not broken over Pune, that made me reach for a long-forgotten lace project. My red sampler from Victorian Lace Today, started, oh, just a year or so ago. It is currently my only project on the needles.
For some reason it’s going a lot faster now than it did when I first started it. I’ve already progressed a couple of inches after twoodays of feverish knitting. Of course, I did stupid things like put the lifeline through the marker instead of around it. I then got lazy about reinserting it, whereupon it naturally began to pucker and pull and make a nuisance of itself. I have to say, it’s a good thng lifelines really *are* lifelines, because inserting them is also a royal PITA. I thread a long needle and then insert it stitch by stitch on the row on the needle, preferably at a simple stockinette row. There isn’t a simpler way to do it, is there?
Of course, taking up a long-dormant project under less-than-ideal conditions of concentration has its pitfalls. I should have chucked the faggoting right in the beginning, I just knew it. I hate faggoting. (For non-knitting readers: it’s not what you think. It’s a lace stitch). The look is not worth the effort, and I always forget if the YO comes before the K2tog or after, and if it’s K2tog or Ptog on the WS. So of course I went and screwed it up for a few rows, and now there’s an unsightly, diagonal ladder in the middle of the cascading knots, like a trap set on the tracks for an unsuspecting train. Can’t you just see it going right off the rails there?
I know. I should fix it. But the lifeline is already above that part, and I feel like it missed its chance to get fixed. It has to stay there as a reminder to me the next time I see faggoting in a pattern and say – it’s only four stitches, I can do it! Luckily I’m not a perfectionist, especially when it comes to lace, and so I’m going to avert my eyes and just ignore it. When it’s an FO, like, another year from now, not one of you is going to remember this post and look for it in the pictures, are you?
I didn’t think so.
