It's Lace!

I am so pleased, and sort of surprised, too. The six-hundred yards of alpaca turned into lace! It wasn't even terribly difficult. The pattern was over ten stitches, with repeats every eight rows. The wrong-side rows were just pearl stitches, which gave me a place to go back to when I made mistakes, which really was pretty rare with this. I think I found it easier than the last lace project (which drove me nuts) because I HAD to pay attention; this pattern is more intricate than the one for the simple scarf I made.

Now I'm blocking it and it's my first time blocking lace. Lace fights back! Thank goodness it's not as fragile as it looks to me because I really had to tug on it to get it to size. I'm starting on a second wrap from the same pattern but with a different color of the Peruvian Tweed Yarn, and I think I am investing in blocking wires before I block the second one.

Yay!!!

It's looking a lot like lace

and that's a good thing, since that's what I set out to knit! After my last lace-knitting adventure, I thought that I might never try lace again, but I'm nothing if not stubborn. Which is why, when I decided to learn to ski, I ignored all the crying and bruises, and kept going back up mountains (small ones) in order to fall over and over again on the way back down. After lots and lots of effort, I became a very-below-average skier. Yay me!

So this is my newest attempt at lace and it's going sort of well: not much swearing, lots of counting, no crying or bruises. The pattern is called, plainly enough, Peruvian Tweed Shawl, and the pattern calls for - surprise, surprise - Peruvian Tweed yarn. It's great soft yarn, 100% superfine alpaca, spun in Peru, and a skein of it has a whopping 600 yards of yarn. I had named it Hank and was keeping it as a pet, but it kept calling out that it really wanted fulfill its purpose and become something.

It's becoming a shawl but I'm not sure I am old enough to wear a shawl. Maybe I'll call it a wrap instead.

You Can Take Me Out

But apparently, you can't dress me up.

I am not one of those pulled-together women who always look perfect. Their hair is perfect; their nails are perfect; their makeup is perfect; their clothes are perfect. You get the picture. You might even BE the picture.

Saturday night we went to the symphony. I got all dressed up in new gray flannel dress that I just love, and topped it off with a blue pashmina wrap. Thank goodness.

When we returned to the house, my husband started to ask if I needed help with the zipper, and then said, "Oh, you've already partly unzipped the dress."

Oh, sh*t. (Remember, I don't swear.) No, I hadn't already unzipped the dress. I had never zipped it all the way up to start with. I had meant to ask my husband to zip it up all the way before we left the house. But hadn't. I just hope the pashmina was enough cover to hide my mistake.


On the good news front, while I was at my LYS this morning, buying more nylon (yuck) yarn to RE-MAKE ( don't ask)the Bunny Blanket for Elizabeth, I noticed this gorgeous stuff. The picture doesn't even begin to do it justice. It is soft. It's 100% superfine alpaca. It's soft. It is natural colors-no dyes, just scoured. Did I mention it's soft? It is from alpaca raised in the Andes above 13,000 feet (I don't know what that has to do with anything, but the yarn sure is soft). AND there are approximately 600 yards of it!
I love it. I have no idea what it might turn into, but for now, I'm naming it and keeping it as a pet.