Simple elegance

I like difficult knitting patterns. Being a scientist without a lab I find the challenge very mentally stimulating and am still in awe that klutzy me can produce beauty and complexity from mere string (OK, maybe not mere string, I have been lucky enough to work with some truly beautiful yarns and fibers). The ADD usually gets the better of me and I switch between current projects and starting new ones like casually flipping through channels at 3AM looking for something that is not an infomercial.

And then I met the Spring Thaw shawl, and this is not the first project to hit me like this, just the current one. The lace is beautiful, a leafy motif, and the yarn reminds me of home in the fall, but without the leaf peepers getting in my way. But I digress, the point is still the simple elegance. Each 8 row repeat adds half a leaf, and is staggered in such a way that as you finish up one set of leaves, you are beginning another set. OK, not describing it well, but trust me on this. And though it is lace, and therefore a bit fiddly, the pattern makes it really easy to read your knitting and even though my rows are now over 200 stitches each, I know when I make a mistake so no full on ripping back (knock on wood).

But the point is simple elegance. The patterns I choose are rarely so elegant, so deceptively intricate in it's technical simplicity. This is an amazing patters, so I might just have to go and knit it.

J.