Is the World Unravelling, Or is it Just Me?

 Yesterday, I was happily throwing the shuttle back and forth at the Center, excited about the way the huck lace pattern is going, thinking how quickly the design was building up, not a care in the world, when,

PING!

A thread broke.  For no apparent reason, one of the warp threads broke somewhere between the heddles and the back beam.  And I realized that it had become a pattern for the last couple of days of fiber work for me.  

 I am, as I said, very happy with the way the pattern is coming along, though it's very hard to photograph.  I love white on white, but it's a like a little secret I have to keep until things are done, since they're so hard to see.  You can sort of  see the pattern here, with the big crosses and the little side boxes, and you can even see the "dotted Swiss" pattern line by line.  You can probably also see that darn gray stripe down the center.  What the heck is that?  I sure hope it washes out!

the stitch marker holds the dropped stitch

Last week, someone was talking about "String Theory."  Was it Ann? LouAnn?  Someone at the Center, at any rate, said their theory of the world was that it was all KNOTS, and unravelling them all would cause the world to end.  My life is certainly very Knotty, but things have started coming undone.
  I was happily knitting along on the square shawl, picked it up to admire its beauty and saw a loose stitch, undoing itself down one of the lace strips.  My stomach lurched!  I carefully pulled the section wider to see where it came from and how vital it was, and determined that it can be coerced back into the pattern when the shawl is done, with some extra yarn and a crochet hook.
 




The shawl has come along in the last week, dropped thread notwithstanding, and I'm starting to think about what's next.  It started out as a pattern from a book, but I didn't like all the boxy line-by-line pattern the author chose.  I snuck in some Nupp hearts, then a feather stitch I really like, but what's next?  Maybe a fancy border from the Estonian knitting book?

I'm chugging along nicely on the curtains, spending much of Monday in and out of the loominaria, a couple of pattern repeats here and there, but when I got up Tuesday and wove a few patterns, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a long skipped thread right down the middle!  And he brought some friends, on his right!  I could needle-weave the center guy, but his shorter cohorts look like some unweaving is all that's going to set them back in place.
  Don't you sometimes feel as if all this unweaving is making the Earth tilt a little too much on its axis?

 Upset by this pattern of loose threads and fibery chaos, I pulled the blue tencel shawl out of its hiding place.  During the Olympics, I put it down one night, picked it up the next morning, and pulled a pattern off the needles.  It quickly slid down a couple of rows, undoing an entire sequence.  It was shoved in a knitting bag and ignored all these weeks.
  I wanted to see if it was as bad as memory served, and it was, but at least it wasn't white!  I gently pulled it off the needles and ripped it out to the beginning of that pattern row, about 12 rows.  I slid it onto a smaller needle to make it easier, then back onto its correct needle.  I'm pretty sure I got all the damage.  Leo and Weftie are shown examining it for errors, and I will have it back in action soon.
  This morning, it's back to work for me, ending tonight with a potluck dinner in the garden on the farm, with one of my heroes, Ruth Reichl.  I'm a little excited about that!  And then four more days of flour, sugar, eggs and butter until I can weave again.  Have a great week, yourselves, and try to keep those knots together!
Maggie