Get ready to start your engines!

OK – so maybe not the engines, but the Addie Turbos at least.

In a convoluted effort to jump start my knitting (since nothing is inspiring me except stuff from M-D Knitting), I joined The Amazing Lace KAL. It’s not that I don’t have a “next to knit” list a mile long. And let’s not mention the beautiful bamboo for Bombshell, or the KnitPicks Shine for Blaze, or Cinxia waiting patiently for me to continue on to sleeve two (and Ella, the Viking costumes and yeah I’ll admit it, a ton of yarn for “warshrags”).

The difference is that I’m accountable to a group of other knitters to report my progress. And there’re challenges to help flex my creative muscles as the weeks go along. I think it will be good for me; or a total disaster. Time will tell.

I have to pick a project now. I have 3 hanks of KnitPicks Shimmer and would love to use something from my stash. But it’s a variegated colorway and so anything too fussy won’t show the lace detail. I’ve been looking through all my books (which is a feat in itself) and have finally come to the conclusion that I’ll make up my own pattern.

This is HUGE. Make. Up. My. Own. Pattern.

I blame this on the Yarn Harlot. I’ve been reading Knitting Rules and decided that it can’t really be all that hard to make a lace shawl with the dimensions I want. Knitty has this pattern. I love the look of the black part, and I love the size, so I was thinking that I would just make the whole thing like the black part. But that’s a lot of stockinette stitch. A freeking LOT of stockinette, which is defeating the whole lace shawl thing. And starting to sound a lot like the Sad Blankie and all its garter stitch.

So that lead me to the Lace Curtains in M-D Knitting. Sure – why not? 2 KALs for the price of one. Only I don’t have any windows of a small stature that I can cover. It would have to be a big honking curtain. So… and I’m just thinking this now… what?!? Look at that damn shawl! It's B-I-G! Why NOT make Big Honking Curtains to go in my bedroom????

Because that’s insane, that’s why.

One gi-normous project at a time is crazy, much less 2 lace curtains to fit my almost floor to ceiling windows.

I’m still looking in the stitch dictionaries I have and doing the math. I will have made my own shawl pattern by the end of the weekend.

Or I’ll make this!