I am so cut off

From lace knitting.

At least for a little while.

Here's the song in my head:

Oh where, oh where, can my mojo be?
The knitting goddess took it away from me-e-e
I went to Vegas and I thought it'd be good
but I dropped stitches from my neeeedles...of wood.

Okay, it doesn't scan. At all. Let it go, please, I'm a woman under pressure, what can I say.

So, we survived the trip. As I pointed out, I'd started Hanami, messed up the pattern repeat, and left it behind in disgust/annoyance because I didn't want to bring beads on the plane, didn't have time to redo the cast on, and hadn't had time to get to the library to print out my PDF files.

I brought the Jaggerspun Superfine Merino and the LaceStyle book and needles that I thought would be sharp enough to work the Lily of the Valley Shawl by Nancy Bush.

Ha. Hahaha. Ha-ha! HA!

So. Not. True.

Row one? k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, all in the same stitch. Row two? Purl these five stitches together.

Ex-squeeze me? That's possible?

Not for me, not with those needles. I finished three rows, completely disgusted with myself, and read Sara Douglass' The Wayfarer's Redemption all the rest of the trip. I mostly slept and read through the layover in Newark. I hadn't brought any other knitting, and I couldn't bring myself ot do much of anything else.

My choices at this point are two fold. Abandon the project until I get my hands on some of those new Addi lace needles that I want to try out anyway, or come up with some way to keep Nancy's crazy stitches loose enough that I can P5tog with the needles I have. I'm going to try doing a k1, p1,k1,p1,k1 instead of the yos, see if that helps. When I feel braver.

Until then, I'm going to knit inside-out socks. The colors are growing on me, I think. And, truth-be-told, they're handknit socks. I could fail to love them, but I feel it would somehow reduce me as a person.

Oh, wait, you wanted to know about the trip? The most exciting part was when we were in the elevator, on the way to the wedding itself, and this guy in the elevator got an eyeful of my shawl, and asked "Did you knit that yourself?" And started telling me all about how his wife knits fine lace, and so few women do, and how gorgeous it was...this would have been fantastic if he'd been, ya know, looking at the shawl. Not the girls. But all ended well. Robb took me shopping. I got new jeans, one of the Gap's desi(red) shirts, a Johnny Cash t-shirt for $9...it was good. I wasted $20 on the slot machines just so I could say that I did, Robb played in a Texas Hold'em tournament for 6 1/2 hours on $100 bucks (lost in the end, should have left after 5 1/2 hours) but had a grand time.

Pictures tomorrow, after I've unearthed the camera.