The lace is winning...

I'm long overdue for an update. I've been busy knitting Christmas presents and working, between those two things, I sleep. So here's a longish post about what I've been up to (attempting to finish before the baby wakes up!):

Christmas was wonderful! The people who got knitted presents all loved them (with the exception of one who I haven't seen yet) and I finished knitting the last present on Christmas Eve Eve, woot! My brother, sister-in-law, and nephew are all in town and were actually here for Christmas, which hasn't happened in several years. The rest of my family came over and we got a nice family picture, complete with four generations!

Joey thoroughly enjoyed himself, though he has not gotten the hang of opening presents. Mostly he just wants to eat them, with the paper on or off. The rest of the family spoiled him so much, I didn't bother to get him anything, so I bought my nephew Jimmy some books instead ;)

You know you're an obsessive knitter when getting yarn for Christmas excites you! My first-ever hank of yarn was a wonderful surprise from Theo--who knows my desire to knit myself a lace shawl. She knit a lace shawl using this exact type of yarn (different color) and said she had plenty so I'm knitting the same pattern. Currently, it's kicking my butt for unknown reasons, though probably because of the sheer number of stitches on my needles. I cast-on 273 and it took a while because it's not a standard cast-on that I'm used to, also it was 273 stitches! I had the correct number, did the set-up row correctly, but when I moved on to the first charted row, I ran into issues. I got to the center marker and had 3 extra stitches. Having no clue where I had made the mistake, I painstakingly un-knit (also referred to as tinked/tinking because "tink" is "knit" backwards) all 136 stitches and started the row over. Imagine my surprise when, for a second time, I arrived at the center marker with 3 extra stitches. Unwilling to tink all the way back again, I began counting in hopes that I could find the error somewhere else.

I had to Google, "What the heck do you do with a hank?"

Sure enough, there it was! My center marker was off by 3, phew! Row 1 continued with no other issues. Row 2 was just a purl row, easy peasy. Row 3 is where I'm currently paused. First time through, I got to the center marker and had 1 extra stitch. Remembering my last issue, I decided to count and look over my stitches before tinking back. Sadly, I found the mistake quickly because it was one of my first few stitches. Aaaaaalllllllll the way back I tinked, stopping to curse every several stitches, fixed my error and continued. Devastation hit me when I reached the center marker again because I was off by 1 again, but this time I was missing 1! Deciding not to tink back again was an easy decision because missing a stitch in that part of the pattern was a fairly easy fix. So I moved on. I'm currently on the second half of the 3rd row, we'll see what happens. I think I might be destined NOT to do lace, despite how much I want to...