It always happens this time of year (um, and sometimes at other times of the year, but definitely and without fail at this time of year).  Lace shawls!!!

I love lace shawls.  I love lace weight yarn.  I love lace patterns.  I love knitting lace.  I love designing lace shawls. 

And, apparently, I love letting lace shawls sit half-knit indefinitely.  Why? Not quite sure. Honestly, I do not get tired of them or bored with them.  And it is not a matter of something going horribly wrong so that one buries them in the back of the stash in disgust. 

But they do take a lot of knitting time.  So, there I will be dancing along with my lace knitting, and then Something Comes Up.  Like a new grandbaby. Or Christmas.  Or autumn.  Or a trip to the beach.  Sometimes it is another knitting project.  Sometimes, I confess, it is another lace shawl!

Distraction is the enemy.  And once I get distracted and the lace shawl sits for a couple of weeks it goes stone cold.  Lace projects go stone cold faster than any other kind of knitting (for me, at least) because I lose my sense of what is going on with the lace rather quickly.  When I am dancing with my lace on a regular, perhaps daily basis, I rock!  But after a couple of weeks, a month or so, it has all sort of slithered away like sand through a sieve.  So, when I pick it up again, I have to mentally start all over – like I have some sort of Lace Amnesia!  It is kind of painful, really – and sooooo much easier to just start another lace shawl!

Well, here is Spring – even the weather is acting Spring-ly now – and ever fiber of my being is crying out to knit a lace shawl.  My inner fibers are being aided and abetted by Franklin Habit who has just designed a lace shawl out of Einband Laceweight Lopi Icelandic Wool – which is, apparently, a fabulous and beastie lace yarn and I want it so much I could weep!  I spent a good part of yesterday swatching lace patterns for it!

And, yet, do I not have at least 3 lace shawls (that come readily to mind – there may be more…) sleeping peacefully in my studio?  Do I not (here’s the kicker!), do I not have a stunning lace shawl on the needles right now that I am happily working on nearly everyday?!  The Scandinavian Sharf is nearly half done, for heaven’s sake, and I have envisioned a summer wardrobe around it!

And yet, and yet….

So, today I dug out my Lily of the Valley shawl – a delicious yarn in shades of green, very Spring-like – and have started to wrap my brain around nupps again.  I am also courting some very good intensions regarding a pair of half-knit pants for Owen (to match a jacket that is done).  And I will kitchner the toes on the Woodland Socks.  And I will keep working on the Scandinavian Sharf!

And maybe, maybe I will just order some Lopi Einband…just to taste. (Do you remember Winnie the Pooh saying – of honey – “I wasn’t going to eat it, I was just going to taste it”? like that!)