firecat

I have a Finally Fucking Finished Object (FFFO), a version of Branching Out by Susan Pierce Lawrence on the Knitty web site.

I've had it on the needles since August or so.

I wasn't actively knitting it that whole time, but I had a very difficult time with it and probably knit about twice as many pattern repeats as ended up in my finished scarf. If this is "easy lace" (as billed on Knitty) then I'm not cut out to be a lace knitter.

(I haven't given up on knitted lace yet though.)

It's made out of some mystery yarn on a cone that I got in a Newton's Yarn Country sale. The yarn is soft, light and fluffy. It's not very elastic (and therefore not the smartest yarn to use for a first lace project. Oh well). My swatch was completely unaffected by the washer and dryer so I don't think the scarf is going to be "blockable" per se.

There are still a lot of mistakes—but most of them are relatively invisible, even to me. The one that isn't invisible (but I'm too lazy to fix) is that the first 1/4 of the scarf is "inside out." I noticed quite a while later that I had switched the right side and wrong side rows. It's still probably not noticeable to anyone but another knitter.

Design decisions as a result of mistakes department:

I hopelessly fouled things up around 1/3 of the way into the scarf and "fixed" it by knitting some rows of garter stitch and starting over. So then I knit another chunk of garter stitch 2/3 of the way along.

branching-out_03-04-07
Originally uploaded by firecatstef.

branching-out-full
Originally uploaded by firecatstef.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

karenkay.livejournal.com

I have a "disability" that prevents me from seeing 2D as 3D. It also impacts my ability to judge distances and to read knitting charts. (To extrapolate the FO from the chart.) I'm just missing a piece of visualization software in my brain.

I do lace knitting by swatching till I can make it through one repeat and remember it. Sometimes I have to write out the stitch pattern (even if it's provided, just to get it into my brain).

I like lace, however; I like how it looks and the "magic" of how it's created. But I also have to be careful not to attack something too complicated, because I'll just give up. So good for you for finishing!

From:

firecat

I wonder what that disability is called. I have something similar, although it manifests more when I'm trying to put things together than when I'm creating a fabric.

I am able to read knitting charts but I have to frequently remind myself what the symbols mean and look at the chart to reorient myself after every small section of a row.

I was only able to memorize one row of this pattern, because the other rows were vaguely similar to each other but different so I kept getting them mixed up.

Making a lacy fabric using crochet is a lot easier for me and I should probably just stick to that. (Thanks.)

From:

karenkay.livejournal.com

I think what you're talking about is slightly different. As long as I have the physical pieces in front of me, I can put stuff together fine. But it's definitely true that we all have little brain lacunae.

One of the other things I do for lace is type up the lace pattern with boxes on the left to check off the row as I start it. Especially these days, I don't have much time to knit, and am unlikely to be able to do a whole repeat before I have to stop. Once I have the pattern down (which may take over a foot of knitting), then I just put a stitch marker through a hole in my needle-sizer to mark the rows.