Lace Knitting / Life Lesson

Today was lace knitting class with Annie. It was lovely to spend another few hours in the honey-colored Slater Mill Community Guild studio, surrounded by like-minded knitting folks, learning the ins and outs of knitting lace and reading lace charts.

Today's class was larger. 20 of us today. As a result the whole experience was far less intimate, less like a group of knitters at a S 'n B and much more like a class.

As usual, I thought I knew it all, and plowed ahead. I do this a lot, not only in knitting but in all areas of my life, rushing in headlong, thinking I'm the smartest person in the room, not needing to pay attention or follow the rules. As you can imagine, this is rarely the best strategy. And so it went today.

I've knit lace projects many times and felt very confident that I could read a lace chart, no problem. I quickly knit the first two rows of the pattern and then sat smugly as Annie slowly and calmly instructed my fellow knitters who were still making their way. Smugly that is until she asked us how many stitches we had on left on our needles. We were supposed to have 5 (the magic number). What was all this "magic number" talk, I had 6.

Not such a smarty pants after all, huh?

I think Annie felt bad for me, because later she came by to check on my work and proclaimed that it was "very nice" and even held it up to show the rest of the class. She was being sweet.

After the third or fourth repeat, my brain finally clicked and I began to understand about the magic number. I guess it's all about patience, which for me is a somewhat (very much) lacking virtue.

So, I took a knitting class and learned less about knitting and more about life. There you go.

It was a good weekend.