Wherein I Get My Butt Kicked

I'm almost 58 years old and I allowed an ounce of mohair to kick my butt clear across the state of New Jersey.

And I'm still not sure exactly how it happened. I mean, I still have all my faculties. I know my way around US9 Knit Picks Options and a ball of Karabella Gossamer. I've knitted with mohair before. I know the drill.

I can't even say the pattern is difficult because it isn't. Sea Foam is fairly common and Sheryl Thies presents a lovely variation in OCEAN BREEZES. There's no reason I should have had to frog three times and then abandon ship quicker than First Class abandoned the Titanic.

Okay, so I did one really stupid thing. I wrote up a little cheat sheet so I could keep the pattern in front of me and I made a wee mistake. (I left out two YOs . . . don't ask.) Which definitely screwed me up. But it's more than that. It's some basic deficiency in my character that turns me into a whimpering, snarling, psychotic mess by the time the first pattern repeat is finished.

I mean, I bailed on Branching Out and nobody bails on Branching Out. A five year old could knit Branching Out.

I love lace. I stand in awe of knitters who turn out yard after yard of whisper-fine lace. Lace-knitting is as close to magic as I'm ever likely to come. But I hate knitting it. Remember how much Nancy hates knitting socks? That's me with lace. My shoulders tense up as soon as I cast on. By the end of the first row, those shoulders are up around my ears. That mushy messy lump of fabric that may or may not block into something fabulous makes my heart beat faster . . . and not in a good way. In a panic attack kind of way. Invariably I lose count or drop a stitch or do something idiotic to throw a monkey wrench into the works and I walk away one more time.

To me, knitting lace is the fiber equivalent of root canal without anaesthetic. Pure torture. So why, I ask you, am I incapable of turning away from it? I actually made a Charlotte (with Ritratto instead of Koigu) late last year (and forgot to photograph it in my Christmas rush) but I'm not sure that counts as real lace. (Nobody has troubles with Charlotte. Nobody but me, that is.)

I hate not being able to do something. I want, just once, to knit a beautiful piece of lace and then walk away from it, back into my happy land of swirling cables and sturdy rectangles.

Hope really does spring eternal.