Day of Decisions

This was a day of decisions.  As much as I enjoyed that lovely Drachenfels, what my heart wanted was to work on my Shetland shawl.  I spent a great deal of yesterday looking through more stitch dictionaries to see if I could find a different variation of the Crest of the Wave pattern to resolve my issue with the very pretty thing I was using.  I searched but I didn't see anyway around my troubles. And my troubles of course had everything to do with the unusual decreases on every row.  Those self same every row decreases were what was giving me the troubles on the corners.  

The last book I looked at was Heirloom Knitting, the masterwork of Shetland lace knitting.  It was worth seeing what they had for a Crest of the Wave variation.  I stopped to look at the pretty lace I had first choosen.  

and it occurred to me that I stopped knitting it because I knew I would run out of yarn before the end of a pattern repeat and that that would not be so pretty as complete motifs in a band of graident colours. I reminded myself that I had to order more yarn anyway.  All the struggles and I had to order more to keep the struggle going?  That just seemed foolish.  There just was no reason not to go back to the Spanish lace.  The only thing stopping me was having to face taking off all the knitting I had done and to go back and reset the count to prepare for this lace again.  I faced it.  

And I thrived.  I pulled everything back, and redid the set up row (to get the stitch count correct) and this evening, after a nice supper, I sat down and started the lace. It's just such a lovely thing with no weirdness that is quite simply fun to knit. It is going well.  I made it right around and each side has the same number of motifs.  There is a little bit I will have to fudge on one side, but it is just a few stitches.  I did about a third of side two and decided to call it a night.  

But it felt so good to be working on this piece again.  It is just such a lovely thing.