New Year's...Goal

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. Never have. If you're going to make a change, just make it, whatever the time of year. Who needs all the extra pressure of announcing at the beginning of a brand new year, "I am going to do this or be a failure"?

Still...there is certainly something to be said for reflecting on the past year and setting some goals for the new year, or at least contemplating what one would like to achieve in the privacy of one's own mind--or blog, as the case may be. [Case in point: I had privately decided to try to go this whole year only buying sock yarn, because I have enough sweater yarn to keep me busy through the next ice age. My resolve lasted until I saw that Beaverslide had some $12.95 merino/mohair on clearance for $6.00 a skein, and I typed in my paypal password so fast there was smoke coming off my keyboard. Now, had I publicly announced my intention, I would have been rather embarrassed at crashing and burning so dramatically on January 4th. As it is, though, I will be happily adding a few more grains of sand to the yarny beach that is my stash room, if you'll excuse the labored metaphor.]

My checkered history with lace knitting has been well documented on this blog. (If you somehow missed my pathetic inability to knit lace without the aid of note cards, stitch markers, row counters, charts, and copious amounts of alcohol, search "lace".) I've never felt any particular desire to conquer this failing, as it were, because although I love lace, I thoroughly enjoy knitting sweaters and don't feel I'm missing out if I don't also knit gorgeous shawls.

Or at least, I didn't until a few days ago. As I was meandering through the destash offerings on Ravelry, I came across a set of six skeins of lace yarn that had been "gradience dyed" so that each skein progressed gradually across the blue-green range of the color wheel and all six taken together completed the journey from blue to green, rather like one very large skein of very long repeat variegated yarn. I was struck by this. Really. Just...struck. I couldn't stop looking at it. This particular set of yarn was a kit for a mystery lace shawl KAL called "Enchanted Wood" from The Unique Sheep that begins on January 10, and it came with a set of color-matched beads. Now, knitting with beads is one of those things I have long looked at and thought, "That way lies madness." Beautiful, absolutely. But like lace times ten. So it makes no sense whatsoever that I justhadtohaveitrightnow and immediately bought the kit and signed up for the KAL. And, for the record, I'm not a KAL kind of person. It's like group exercise to me: public embarrassment adding insult to the injury of painful physical activity. Only, you know, without the exercise part. Which makes my almost giddy excitement over this KAL all the more perplexing. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of the yarn and already have the swatch instructions in hand (although I expect to come down with all the grace of a water filled blimp once I actually start to swatch). I will document the experience here, for those of you who are interested in commiserating...or laughing your heads off at my ineptitude.

My hope is that this will somehow magically lead to some sort of lace-knitting breakthrough that will allow me to whip out heirloom cobweb shawls in under a week without even looking at the charts or using a single lifeline. Or at least that I will successfully complete this one lace shawl without anyone needing to stage an intervention or break out the tranquilizer darts. Just don't call it a resolution; I can't take the pressure.