Consolation knitting

Thinking about the project doesn't always work at least the first time. And for those among us (me) who are very special, seldom. It is as I feared. I'm having trouble following this pattern and I worry that I will have trouble following all patterns. Sigh. I'm lost among the increases for the raglan. It looks right as you see here, but no way is it long enough. I have all the stitches on that I am supposed to but... I'm going to have to rip it back and go back to single increases all along.

So I picked up another project that has been hanging around. I'm calling it consolation knitting. Remember the scarf with the lovely blue yarn from curlerchick? I had a pattern problem in the second row of the lace design, so I had to rip back. While I was that far back I ripped it all the way, because I wasn't satisfied with the depth of the edging garter stitch rows. I recast and did the border in seed stitch (which looks far nicer) and made it a nice deep 6 rows to match the much deeper side edge rows I wanted.

I knit through the first few repeats of the patterns stitches. Something felt different. Something looked different. Something felt even better than the first go round. In my rush for consolation, I picked the wrong stitch from the book, though a very closely related one. This stitch is called Lace Wings, and is noted as an old Dutch pattern. It is a 2 row 7 stitch repeat, and Cats Paw is a three row 7 stitch repeat (noting right side rows only). The first two rows in each are identical. Without the extra pattern row to make Cats Paw, the design that forms ends up showing the yarn even better. Look at all the lovey rich blue wavelets. There is something almost musical about the play of the ebbs and flows of the increases and decreases. Not big crashing music, but intricate music. Like this from Dutch composer Unico Willem van Wassenaer.

I could go back but serendipity is at play. A Dutch stitch for the lovely delft blues that makes me think of music that happens to be Dutch? The knitting goddesses are telling me something and I think its something good.