The end of the winter lingers on, and so do the colds and the coughing… we are very ready for it to be over.  But since there isn't a whole lot we can do about it, I'm trying to stay busy and use my time indoors to work on a little design that I hope to have ready in a few days.

For some of us, Easter will come and there will still be a chill in the air, so I figured a cute bonnet was in order.  I'm working on the bigger sizes, but the basic pattern is already written.

I'm having a lot of fun working on this project.  Normally I make up my knitting projects as I go, since I am close to incapable of following a pattern or getting gauge right;  if something is not working I rip it to the point where I like it and go on from there, but once it is done it is forgotten and I can never reproduce it again.   So taking the time to write things down and ripping (and ripping again) until the size is right, and the lace stitch falls where it should, and everything flows and comes together as I pictured it in my mind… is not only satisfying, but also very entertaining.  Oddly enough, instead of getting frustrated when I need to undo an almost finished bonnet, I feel a surge of excitement about the new possibilities.

When I showed my husband the end result he looked at me with a puzzled look on his face and said "Is that little thing what you've been working on all this time?"  Yes.  That tiny little thing with only 50 stitches has been completely undone at least twice, and parts of it have been ripped countless times.  Sometimes the cast on just didn't look clean enough, or the lace repetitions didn't feel right, or the ribbon eyelets were too prominent…  But at some point it looked just right (or close, I never seem to be completely satisfied, but I've learned to let go of that) , and now only some writing details are left before you can enjoy it too (hopefully without all the ripping out).