Amazing Lace: Meet the team

Myrth Arredondo and Print o' the Wave Stole*

I'm Myrthala. Hi everyone! I live in Northern Mexico, in Monterrey (not nearly in thay county, but it's totally close, and who would recognoze Garza García, right?) and I have been knitting for a little less than 2 years.

I have never knit lace, and I am nervous about it, but really not that much. I can make socks with complicated cable patterns, how different can YO's and decreases be, right? Well, I've got something to say about that, later. Even when I knew I wanted to do lace, I didn't wan to do just anything. I knew that I would have a great summer this year and that vacation-wise, I was lucky. I'll go to Merida, Yucatan for 2 weeks and maybe to Mcallen and South Padre Island for some more time. I need someone to be with me that will not bore me, because I know a lace project is a commitment. My first thoughts were on one of the triangular shawls that I've seen around blogland, but I had to find the right pattern. It seems like the pattern found me, though. I was just browsing blogs and one link came to another and there it was. A free pattern that looked interesting enough and that didn't involve anything out of the normal. It was love at first sight. I had looked and the KAL earlier so I just decided to take the chance and enter. Great excuse to get myself together and concentrate. I love the pattern, even more now that I see it forming in the yarn.

I do know that many other knitters have chosen my pattern, but I don't care. I am completely content with it. Maybe it's the color, but I am totally in love.

I haven't been concentrating that hard, but I think i've got half a pattern repeat daily. And while in airplaines and airports I will have sooo much time, so I do think I'll finish by the deadline. I am in love with how the pattern has been forming from row to row and how the color totally plays along. That is the strategy. Knit at least half a repeat daily (shouldn't be that hard, since it is a 12 row repeat with complicated things only every RS row and purling al the WS's).

My dear pattern, a great choice, the love of my lace-knitting life, is being very coopetative. I have knit more than a repeat in some of the days. It is just so difficult to leave it down. Or maybe I have too much free time (doesn't everyone loooove vacations?). I have also come to like the pattern a lot, for more reasons than just it's pretty face. It has taught me a lot. I've been pretty self-taught about the whole knitting thing, so I actually learn by myself, when things don't "look right" .

Figures that I've had some really big effing mistakes in my knitting history that I had never been able to see before. Until this. My Print o' the Wave Stole kicked my ass in the first pattern repeat. It seems that my k2tog lean the other way. Yep. I have been knitting incorrectly for a ver long time, and I had never noticed. I mean, it doesn't seem wrong. My knitting looks like anyone elses, except it's not. I think that my normal knit stitch resembles a ktbl. It's weird, I know. And, like I said, it doesn't show at all. Except when knitting stitches together, and they slant left instead of right.

So, it looked weird. I noticed, and I swatched and I practiced, and I came up with something that i call the weird front thingy and it works. However, I am now knitting the stitch normally and then passing over the next stitch, sort of like slipping a stich and then psso, but the other way arround, to get an opposite slant.

I am not changing my way of knitting. It feels too strange in my hands, but I am adapting to make my knitting better, even if it is,well, different.

So yeah, even if we had a rough patch in our relationship, I think we already got over it, and now I owe her so much. I have already learned something from her, and it is all getting us closer. I think I was jaded before her, but she is helping me heal.

So, see? We are totally the best team out there. I don0t know if anyone would agree (I could even score some yarn if anyone did, but it's Ok if nobody does), but I don't care. I will enjoy this stole, and I will enjoy this summer.

*by Eunny Jang