Introducing the Team

My little brother is getting married. Ever since they announced their engagement, I've been telling him that he's finally giving me something my parents didn't. I'm getting a sister. Amber is a girly girl, and the wedding is going to be in pink. She's even somehow convinced my brother into wearing a pink tie with his tux. So, as a bridesmaid, I too will be in pink. The bridesmaid dresses are simple and pretty, a white strapless top and a tea-length pink chiffon skirt with a simple pink ribbon tied at the waist.

By what can only be described as the hands of fate working together to converge on several coincidences all at once, earlier this year I finally learned how to knit. I fell for this new hobby hard, and I've been knitting up a storm for months now with no end in sight. With my crochet background, I never really got into aquiring the amazing stash yarns or really even into making anything wearable. I stuck with the household things until everyone in my family had their very own acrylic afghan and my mom was overrun with potholders and crochet-topped dish towels... we won't discuss the doily phase or that cotton lace tablecloth that I spent months and months of my life finishing. Then this new love fell in my lap when I least expect it. I made a couple scarves, a couple hats, started to play with shapes and felt and ventured into the lands of luxury yarns and UFOs. I've even found myself falling hard for the handknit sock. So, naturally, I need to venture into the knit side of the world of lace too.

The stars aligned and convergences happened. On a stash-building day I stumbled on this beautiful yarn on eBay and bought some. I actually picked up 6 skeins of it with no real plan for it. Hundreds of yards of white mohair combined with a pink cotton thread and a silver nylon thread. The photos were pretty, but once I had the yarn in my hands and could see the subtleties and the shimmer in person, it was love at first sight. When I got my bridesmaid dress from alterations and it met the yarn, I knew exactly what needed to be done.

I am always cold. I would be spending a day in a strapless top in air conditioned buildings. The yarn and the dress match perfectly. The plans came together for a bridesmaid stole/wrap/shawl. I found my LYS, found a book on lace (later found out that it's a highly sought after book on lace that goes for a TON more money then I paid for it) and started selecting patterns to play with.

These are the circumstances that have brought my teammate and I together. The yarn and I have some issues to work out, this is going to be a challenging race. We've already tried a much too fussy pattern that didn't work. Other attempts with a different lace pattern that moved around too much caused us to fight over numbers and one of us got all torn up about it. After the last attempt at reconcilliation with a far simpler and more elegant lace pattern in place, we discovered that pattern complexity and counting weren't actually the cause of the problem, the needles seem to be the cause of the problem. So, we will be searching for a new set to join our adventure this week and help our relationship run more smoothly.

We've gotten off to a rocky start, but I'm confident that our team spirit will endure and get us through to the finish line in time for me to have warm shoulders at a wedding reception in July. I'm sure other teammates will join the forray later in the challenge, but at least for the first half of the summer we plan to work together and rise to the challenges as we face them. Bring on the competition, bring on the lace!