Wool & Words

So last weekend on my teaching run to South Carolina, I decided to whip out the Estonian Scarf and knit up a lace pattern repeat. This apparantly was a bad idea, as last night I realized I've somehow lost 10 stitches. I think it happened on the purl rows--I have a sneaking suspicion that 5 sets of two stitches decided they wanted to be forever snuggled together in the shawl.

I know now the painful truth of this summer. My brain is too preoccupied with the rigors of this teaching to even consider working on complicated knitting projects. I see rounds of boring stockinette in my future, endless rounds. If only I had the yarn for the Pi Shawl I'm going to knit for Steve's mother...but, alas, my old LYS has yet to receive the order.

I know that the onset of the case of strep throat I'm recovering from had something to do with my knitting gaffe. On Saturday I had a horrendous headache, exacerbated by my witnessing of a lightning bolt striking a telephone pole as I was driving down the street. EEK! In all my time living in South Louisiana, I'd never been that close to lightning, and the experience was plenty for me. When the lightning hit, there was a flash of that electric blue, then lots of sparks. I was really concerned that there might be a live wire loose, but that turned out to not be the case (whew). The weather was awful, the hotel was not the best (rooms were really humid), and I was tired and lonely. Sniff.

Not the best time to pick up Complicated Knitting. Even for a lace pattern as simple as this one.

Lesson learned. Nothing but stockinette in the round for me when I'm traveling, nothing to worry about except moving the stitch markers and measuring the length.

Now to frog that shawl...grrr.