It's Eeyore kind of weather.

Before I start, a hearty hello to anyone wandering in here from the Midwest Knitters ring. I swear I'm not usually this mopey. Really!

It's been One Of Those Days for more like six weeks here at Chez Madam. Last week I had The Spring Cold, like I do every year, from Sunday all the way through... well, through today, when I'm fighting off the residual crud and hoping that the people at my concert tomorrow won't notice me sniffling between "Three Little Maids" and the finale to HMS Pinafore.

I ended up staying home on Friday, but I didn't have any yarn to play with. (Okay, I didn't have THE yarn, GOOD yarn, whatever that was. Just say yes and we'll move on.) So I tried to reserve the nearby car in the car fleet we use, only to find that it's too short of an amount of time to do online and I have to call the lady to plead for an exception over the phone. "I'm sick and I have to make a quick run to the *cough* store," I say. You know what that cough was hiding. So I walked up the two blocks to the garage, the first time I'd been out all day, and... the car was gone. Some guy had driven off with an unconfirmed reservation. No yarn for me.

So my husband and I went out on Saturday in the now-returned car, and there at Lakeside Fibers we beheld the glorious Wall of Cascade 220. I bought 6 skeins of eggplant 220 Superwash for the aforementioned should-be-in-Lush lacy cardigan, returning three leftover intended-for-babywear skeins.

Why I Love Lakeside, Yet Again: I give the yarn back, saying, "I didn't take it out of the bag, so I can just trade these three for another color, right? I bought the two using this receipt, but the third was from a month ago or so, and even though it's still got your label I wanted to make sure--"

The lady interrupts me. "Don't worry about the receipt. I remember helping you that day."

Then I get home and swatch it. Lo and behold, the sweater I'd coveted for nine months, first as a store sample and then as a pattern sitting on my desk waiting for yarn? Eh. Needs a bit more "line" to it to give it a smidge more architecture. Sigh. The yarn, of course, won't go to waste, but the jury's out on the sweater.

Happily, though, I did pick a new project. You'll notice that in my continued efforts to spiff up the blog I neatened up the sidebar again AND added a progress calculator (I've always wanted one of those!) for the Icarus Shawl from the most recent issue of IK. I've never been much for triangular shawls (okay, I think they look too granny) and as we have previously established, lace and I do not go well together. The pleasing solidity of the piece, though, drew me to it. Yeah, I know that's typically made by using this magic technique called "not knitting lace." It's amazing!

I still have the laceweight lying around from the ill-fated Print o'the Wave, so I thought, "Why not?" And not a moment too soon, either, as Froggy has created an Icarus Knitalong. No time like the present to jump on a random bandwagon, eh? I started and found it refreshingly simple.

I got to the middle of row 25 and felt pretty pleased with myself. Of course, then I lost a stitch somewhere in an eyelet pattern. I made like a dishwasher and "let it soak" overnight before tackling it again tonight after rehearsal. Might I say that I may not be more than a row ahead of where I was yesterday, but even though I had to "ladder up in pattern" over a 5 row x 5 stitch area, I FIXED IT and now I can be on my merry way.

That's what finally made me feel like a real knitter all those months ago: I messed up, but I fixed it. Well, I may be REALLY real with this lace, but maybe I won't need to wrangle it too much. It's turning out delicate and soft, and at the very least I'm looking forward to the thrill of blocking such a scrunchy bunch of lace.

More later.

See; things aren't that bad at all.