I *knitted, I ripped, repeat from* to end of row, and the impatient part of me finally changed to a fingering weight baby alpaca that could take that kind of abuse more easily. (And it, too, is just SO soft–no complaints.) All in good time on that laceweight.
I started over.
The thing that made the most sense was to make a very wide swatch and just keep going and keep checking.
I have had a particular lace idea dancing around my head for over a year now. But since I don’t do charts (it’s a brain injury thing), designing a new lace pattern means figuring out intuitively how many and how and where each stitch should go, and then sitting down and hashing it out till the thing proves itself.  Or not. (I’ve got some real nots in my yarns in that closet.) I’d been avoiding the whole hassle for a very long time, a bit frustrated at myself for not having already done it.
But it was exactly the thing, exactly the most perfect thing, for that guy at Safeway and his girlfriend, if I could just make it work. If nothing else, this gave me the impetus to wrestle the thing into existence.
…And once I got going, really, it wasn’t hard. I was so excited at my success last night, after it had been delayed so long by my own reticence, that I could hardly sleep.
It is past the idea stage. It is past the notes on paper stage. It is past the fixing the typos stage.
Twenty-five inches and 1.5 oz of melt-in-your-hands done, 3 oz left to go.
I owe that guy. Bigtime.