post-election elation

That's what is mostly on my mind today. The economy sucks, my company is laying people off left and right, the baby still doesn't sleep, but you know what? We have a new president. I am feeling the hope. And the best part is, he won't get sworn in until January, so we can live in Dreamerica until reality sets in and we maybe find out that one person can't turn the ship around.

But in more news of chaos and messes - my newest project. You know you're off to a bad start when your beautiful center-pull ball becomes a tangled mess.

I started the first side of the Honeybee Stole with few problems, and I want to work on both halves somewhat equally. The first side went swimmingly, just one small mishap in row 10 that was easily corrected*. I'd learned to read the pattern as I knit and was picking up speed. Then I started the second side. It is amazing to me how many problems I can run into, unique problems every time, when I was thinking this side would go more smoothly now that I know what I'm doing.

When I tried to start, the center-pull ball didn't want to give up its middle strand. I had to pull out a chunk of the middle, making a huge mess. I had to cut the mess into three pieces to untangle it enough, and then still didn't find the elusive end until the three messes were untangled and wound. Normally I wouldn't care and would just take the loss of yarn, but since the other skein was perfect and the two halves would need the same amount of yarn, I persevered. The people on the train probably think I'm crazy. Or a few-days-late Halloween Spiderwoman.

I screwed up the first row completely and had to reknit half of it. I don't even know what I did. Maybe I was channeling a dead knitter.
I screwed up the second row because I'd missed a YO in reknit of the first row.
I screwed up one of the edges on almost every row for the first 10 rows (these were relatively easy fixes). Either a missed YO, a missed PSSO, or knitting when I should have purled.
On row 12 I somehow read the line above my row marker and knit that instead. It wasn't even close but I didn't catch that until almost the end. At one point that smart knitter in my brain thought, "this seems familiar, purling most of the row" but I didn't bother to pay any attention. Who listens to the smart knitter?
While unknitting row 12 I dropped a YO and had to reconstruct several rows below it.
The kicker, though, for weird mishaps happend on row 15. I realized halfway through that before I'd started, the tip of my needle had slipped through a stitch several rows down and there was no way I was going to be able to finish the row without removing the needle from all of the live stitches to undo that tangle.
I haven't started row 16. I'm afraid the needle-removal might have done some serious damage, and I'm not feeling strong enough to face it.

Clearly knitting complicated lace isn't a good fit for me right now. My mind is elsewhere, I can't count to five...and yet, I tell myself, for the low-low price of just 3 rows a day, I can finish this beauty in plenty of time for my friend's wedding. Who can't find 15-20 minutes a day to knit? OK, who can't find 15-20 minutes several days with half an hour here and there to make up for missed days?

Oy. I think it's time to start another pair of boring stockinette socks. See pretty colors. Pretty colors go around and around and around...


* Row 10 correction: the pattern is shifted by 1 stitch and since this portion is near the middle, i.e. the back of the wearer's neck, I decided to ignore it. Easiest fix ever.