a moment of silence, please

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here lies the body of the man lace as we have grown to know and love him

last night, i’m afraid, after a fierce battle, worthy only of a knitter in complete denial, he succumbed to the fatal effects of WTF-was-she-thinking?? a quiet ripping out ceremony for family only followed at the frog pond, where he spent a good many of his final days. a renewal and rebirth ceremony, lasting til all hours of the night left many mourners slap-happy and not nearly rested enough for work today. but, as one family member expressed it, “our duty is to our creator”.

so, there you have it. was that dramatic enough for you? personally i am still a lttle stunned. everything was fine. everything was going along just dandy. i only began to suspect something might be amiss during my 4pm class. but we all looked at the piece and felt it (you have to feel it—it’s man lace), and assured ourselves it was fine, especially since i did NOT want to start this project yet again. so i knitted away.

then, during the 6:30 class, that creepy feeling began to sneak up on me again, and this time, when i showed the class, they were completely on the wrong side of the answer i wanted to hear. yup, it was pretty clear by then—if i kept knitting that stitch with these needles, i was NOT going to have enough yarn. i had about 16 inches of man shawl done and i had used more than 25% of my yarn.

sigh.

all i can say is, good thing i didn’t have to have it done for last sunday’s birthday festivities.
i should have suspected something was up when i was having that feeling of knitting and knitting and knitting (like through two TV shows), only to look and see that i had put on maybe an inch.

hmph. so, i switched to plan B. i cast about 10 less stitches onto size 8 needles and commenced with our second choice for favorite stitch pattern, “hypoteneuse”.

this was a really close second, so i don’t feel too bad about changing the pattern. it’s much flatter and grows a lot faster on the needles, so i feel good about it. i’ll catch back up to where i was in no time—i promise. meanwhile, we really do love our first-choice pattern, and i am already making plans to use it either with the Fearless Fibers DK cashmere i bought, or the Briar Rose Legends that debbie bought (heee-hee, i’m raiding her stash online).

yesterday i tried to send you over to cheryl’s blog Seed Stitch to show you her incredibly beautiful moth shawl, but did i manage to do it right??—NO! (sorry cheryl!)
so now just take a moment to go look at her creation—it’s simply stunning and the photography makes it more so.

elsewhere in the moth-o-sphere, christine just emailed to show me her completed shawl, which was BEADED, and beautifully done, too. i mean, i am not a bead knitter, but this piece is exquisite, and you oughta go see it (especially if you want the beading knowledge). and give her lots and lots of comments, because she did all this incredible work and then—get this—she gave it away.
it’s really tastefully done christine—i’m so impressed. thank you for sharing it.

i also am honored that liz and debbie have agreed to test knit the casinoMini to help me prepare the pattern for release. before i tore into last night’s tragedy, i spent some time fine-tuning the shawl point, yet again (this one is a puzzler, i dunno why . . . oh! you think it’s moi? hmm). this morning my nicely typed instructions looked something like this:

i love scarawling. it makes the meticulous reknitting process somehow bearable if i can just make great, big crossouts over everything that turns out wrong.

15 thoughts on “a moment of silence, please

  1. I saw both finished Moth shawls and they are breathtaking! With my trip East coming up in about a week and half I just don’t have time to start. But, I will SOON! Good luck with the man lace.

  2. Ouch. Oh, that’s so sad. Glad you hopped back on the horse again, though. Or re-saddled a different one. You know what I mean. 🙂

  3. Poor baby. I feel your pain. And I’m thrilled to be a test knitter. It’s sort of like being a test pilot, except that it’s all of the thrill and none of the kill!

  4. *bowing my head in man-lace prayer* God speed my friend, God speed *sob,sniffle,snort*

    andddddd, I am sooo excited to be a test knitter, I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy 😉

  5. I hate that creepy feeling….I know exactly what you mean. Creepin’ up on you that something is NOT right…. Well, I think it will look great, and you will be pleased in the end….

  6. Too bad, soo sad. I was so looking forward to seeing the final product. I’m sure you’ll think of something that may turn out much better in the end. These things happen for a reason. That’s the way I like to look at it!

  7. farewell to the emperor, long live the emperor! ten thousand years, man lace! 🙂

    (can’t wait. i love the idea almost as much as saying, “man lace.”)

  8. Bummer on the man lace. But the new pattern is also pretty cool. It will be interesting to see how it develops. And like you said, you can build the old pattern in a different yarn. I think it’s definitely still worth doing!

  9. It’s hard to wrap my mind about frogging that much work. Mercifully you listened to the creeping feeling before the work progressed longer.

    Looking forward to seeing how the new manlace turns out. Here’s to swift knitting, no tangles, and counts that behave themselves.

  10. Ohhhh, bummer about having to tear out the man lace. Sounds like you showed the appropriate respect. Love the reference to your little memorial moment at the “frog pond.” Hee, hee!

    New man lace, of course, looks great too!

  11. Alas, poor man lace, we hardly knew ye. 🙁 But I like the new version! It looks easy to knit, with that nice bold diagonal. No charts, no fuss… dare I say it is more manly, even? 😉

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