Willpower 2, Failure 0

I cannot count how many times in the past two months I thought I finally was going to get ahead of the curve only to find myself behind a seemingly insurmountable mountain of work and life obligations.

I'm in government finance and its budget season, so the forces in my world have been excessively engaging, at their best, and infuriatingly obtuse, at their worst. Ugh. But, you know there is an amazing silver lining, and one that I keep coming back to time and again.

It's already February. That's right, February. I have been far too busy to even notice winter passing me by. Now, that is something to celebrate at chez yarn. Usually by the winter solstice, which is December 21st or 22nd, I am miserably counting down the hours and days and weeks and months left of the dark days of winter. This misery wallowing begins the moment we turn the clocks back.

I'm in awe of how busy I've been to really, and I mean really, acknowledge the time of year. It's like I've been in a dream state and upon waking I learn I hibernated through (hopefully!) the worst of winter. This is totally a cause for celebration in my world.

Yet the excitement, hmmm...., the excitement is messing with my resolution to finish up what's on my needles. A couple of days ago, when I thought I had reached a milestone on my second Gold Hill Cable Rib sock, I realized I was a repeat and half away from where I thought I was.

I thought I was ready to begin the heel on the second sock, but I was about 10 rows out. That minor snafu generated a whole cloud of bad knitting mojo. And somewhere right below mental consciousness it festered for about 20 or so hours where it bore fruit, resolution bending fruit.

No! I do not want, under any circumstance, to start a new project. I am definitely feeling the power of my will in keeping this stance. So even when I was at my weak point last night, I kept to the spirit of it. I needed a little sumthin' sumthin' and so I came up with a way to keep to my word and to satisfy the wanderlust.

First, I caked up one of these fantabulous dark Paul skeins of Wollmeise:

And I let it sit there on the coffee table in front of me while I swatched a gorgeous lace panel that has captured my imagination. The panel is from Barbara Walker's Second Treasure of Knitting Patterns.

This is the second time I sat down to knit the panel. The first time was with a worsted weight yarn when I was trying to come up with scarf pattern for Claudia. The swatch came out okay, but I determined the pattern itself didn't jibe with what I was looking for in designing her scarf.

This time around, though, my goal was to satisfy the constant, and primal, urge I've been fighting to knit with laceweight yarn. I have yet to really work with this type of yarn and my inner knitter has been fixated on it for some time.

I picked up a cone of silk laceweight yarn I sorta accidentally inherited from my Dad's wife, Chris, and had a go at the panel. After two or three times of knitting four or five rows and then frogging, I decided to chart Barbara Walker's written instructions.

I have some kind of reading disability that was never diagnosed in school. It rears its ugly head when I try to knit from written patterns. This is why I usually design most of what I knit. It wasn't until I happened upon the wonderful world of charted instructions that I realized I wasn't shut out of the wide world of lace. Charts just work for my brain. After the initial hump of learning a particular designers key, I am good to go.

So after I spent some time charting the panel, I gave the swatch another go and a miraculous thing happened. I lost all interest in it. I realized I actually was in the mood for the double stranded garter stitch goodness of my Log Cabin Afghan.

Willpower: 2
Failure: 0

Happy Friday!