Out of practice

 In lace knitting, that is.

I am pretty visual, and whenever I am asked about what I think the most important thing to learn about knitting (beside of knit and purl) I always say that in my opinion teh most important thing is to learn to SEE our knitting. To see the shapes, the stitches, and how shapes, stitches, increases and decreases relate to each other, learn to find key points in patterns, etc. This is partly the reason, I hardly ever use stitch-markers, and even when I do try to use them, I inevitably take them our after a couple of rows, because they annoy me, and I don't need them. 

Even in a lace pattern, where there are patterns in the right side and the wrong side as well, such as the ice-flower pattern, after a repeat or two I can see where I am going, and I learn the rythm. 

However, I have not knitted lace in ages, but I decided to use my own handdyed yarn and knit a neckwarmer to a friend of mine. 

And boy did I struggled with setting the pattern up. Yes I know, I am a philologist and counting to fifteen is above my capabilities, but... Ehh. One of the things I should trust is counting. That is if a pattern repeat is 15 stitches, and I cast on 180 stitches, I should not have more than a stitch left over after a pattern repeat. I allow that one for miscounting, which CAN happen, when you cast on 180 stitches, but if I have more than that, I definetly messed up somewhere in the row. 

And no, an extra decrease, and/or yarnover will not fix that, especially, if after the 12th row I still have problems with the pattern fitting my stitchcount. Yes, I caved in and admitted to myself, that I will not be able to fix the problem with laddering down a couple of stitches, or adding a yarnover and I frogged about 15 row of lace back to the beginning garter stitch rows, and started again, and once again, I had about 4 stitches at the end of the round. So I started at the beginning checking yarnover, knit, yarnover, knit knit ssk, knit 4, k2tog, k2, yarnover k2tog, and again and again, when I found where I left out a knit or two, and THINK back the stitches (going backwards stitch by stitch) until the error, and go again. 

Guess what, I, who had no problem to knit the Aeolian shawl, started an 180 stitch neckwarmer, with a pattern I have already knitted, four times. And even then when I had properly set up the pattern in the first round, I cannot knit it by intiution. I still have to pay attention to the pattern. 

Maybe I should go back to my colorwork. 

Not. 

I mean, I am not abandoning stranded knits, but I, porbably, will knit a bit more lace again.