Excitingly complex / soothingly simple‏

I started the Rock Island Shawl last Thursday, in handspun laceweight. The border is exciting knitting - it’s a 12 stitch pattern, 8 rows to a repeat, done 71 times. It's true knitted lace, so there are no rows that are just a straight purl back. To add to the complexity, each row is short and so, rather than doing the same repeat say 80 times in a row, its only done once before the next row. The sum of all this is that, while the knitting isn't difficult, as such, I do need to have the pattern in front of me at all times. On the plus side, because the rows are so short, it is immediately obvious if something has gone wrong in any row, and there is something fun about the complexity.

(I know it doesn't look like much, but that's the nature of unblocked lace. It will look great when it's blocked, or so I keep assuring myself)

Last Saturday night I went out for dinner and drinks with friends, and I had no knitting that was suitable to take, so I went out without knitting. I figured it would be fine, Elise doesn't love it when I knit in public anyway. I was playing with some sticks from the cocktails we were drinking, and I may have been making a clacking noise. For a while. Elise turned to me and said "the knitting I don't mind, but please stop making that noise!" I guess the fact that I knit her nice things combined with the fact I always knit, has broken her.

To overcome the problem of having to pay attention all the time, yesterday at the pub I cast on for Idlewood. This starts with 40 centimetres of cowl, knitted in the round. Around and around and around. I don't need to look at it, I don't need to pay attention, it's just knitting till its done. Using the Corriedale I finished earlier in the week is just adding to the soothing satisfying nature of this project.

On the one hand, sublime complexity and on the other, divine simplicity. Now that's what I call perfection.