Am I beginning to "Get It"?

Although I have been dreaming of new socks (and thinking about the coming cold weather and the need for more pairs of warm socks), I have continued to work on my Rosebud Shawl. It's going much better than the last time I wrote about it. And, I think I'm beginning to get a glimmer of understanding about lace knitting...

I've only knit two lace projects before Rosebud. In each of those projects (both scarves) the lacey pattern was quite apparent after just one pattern repeat, and neither pattern bunched-up very much. So, as I knitted along, I could see progress and design with nearly every row. Rosebud, on the other hand, just looks mostly like a jumbled snarl of yarn. You can only see a hint of the pattern if you stretch-out the knitting and hold it up to the light, and then you can only see a small patch of knitting that looks like it has a plan. Part of my glimmer of understanding here is that lace knitting requires faith and patience...faith that it will turn out to be at least somewhat like the picture of the FO on the pattern, and patience to keep on knitting until you can block it.

Also, I've noticed that the more I knit, the more I tend to fool-around with any given pattern. In this case, I'm adding several pattern repeats to the first section of the shawl - which will result in a longer shawl. In the pattern, when you finish the first section you are one fourth of the way through the shawl. (In musical terms, this is an 'ABBA' design. The two 'A' sections are identical and the middle 'B' sections are each equal in lenth to one 'A' section.) When I reached the point in the pattern where the first 'A' section was to be finished, I looked at my little jumble of weird knitting and decided that the shawl wasn't going to be nearly long enough. I'm a big lady, after all. I stretched it lenghwise and it was about 18" long, which would result in a shawl approximately 72" long after blocking. Since I want the shawl to be a bit longer than that, I'm adding several pattern repeats to this section. And that means, of course, that I will add a few pattern repeats to the middle section and to the final section as well, to keep the ratio of A's and B's correct.

There just isn't enough knitting time in the day for me. I want to knit so many things. As I said, I'm dreaming of socks and also thinking about the second Fair Isle mitten to do, and I really want to work on a Fair Isle project on circular needles (a hat? A bag?) before I try to tackle a whole sweater knit in Fair Isle. Maureen remains my inspiration... And to make matters even more frustrating, I find that sometimes I just have to set the knitting aside and do something else for a while, even if it is during my 'knitting' time. Aaughhhh!