(I've decided to start adding some Italian translations; I thought it would be good practice for me, plus I just joined the Knitters in Europe webring, and, I don't know, multilingual is good.  Please feel free to correct me if your Italian is better than mine!)

Have you ever knit something and as it progressed, found yourself liking the unblocked texture so much that you wanted to leave it that way?  I'm not talking about the lace that just looks like a lumpy mass until it's

Have you seen the December Magknits yet?  I finished this hat too late to include in the Cinnabar pattern on Magknits, and I'm still working on the hat pattern, but I hope to finish it soon.

No, I didn't knit this.  I purchased it at Barneys for way too much money--and then found an area next to one side seam where several stitches were unraveling.  (Rather than go to the trouble of trying to exchange it, I just fixed it).  I thi

I finished this hat about a month ago, and wrote a quick post promising the pattern, once I had finished a variation using SSKs instead of k2togs.  I worked on said variation over the weekend, and when I started the crown

Well, here she is, and she's..not...quite...right.  I don't mean the two different sleeves (still dithering about which one to use), nor even the eyelets near the lace sleeve's raglan seam, which have grown frighteningly large and must be hauled into shape.  No.  Thes

As  you may have noted in the photo in this post, I seamed Chinese Lace together with two different sleeves.  Yet here I have two sweaters, each with matching sleeves (ignore those blurry areas just above the lower lace borders).  But how?  Am I a speed knitter? Emphatically, no.  As Carol suggested in her comment to the above-mentioned post, I cut the photo in half, flipped the halves, and then put them together to create two distinctly different sweaters.  (And then, since that process also flipped half of the lace hem, I superimposed the original hem over each.) 

No, I haven't forgotten that at some point I need to decide what kind of neckline to use.  Indeed, that point is now, as I'm well into the armhole shaping of the front.  Here is roughly how a boatneck would

I was wondering about the fit of the Chinese Lace Pullover, so I decided to "try" it on--if trying it on with no back and only one seamed sleeve can be called that.  I believe the fit will be good; the waist is slightly shaped, and then the ribs are form-following.  A few days ago, the partially assembled Chinese Lace pullover was sitting on my desk, and the Teenaged Stepdaughter (TS) spotted it.  "Ooh.  I like that."  Pause.  "I'm not usually that crazy about sweaters, but that's kind of cool."  Pause.  "The color's kind of weird though."  (She favors black, and lots of it.)  Anyway, we both decided the all-lace sleeve was much more interesting than the ribbed one, although I'll leave that one on until I finish the back, so I can put the whole shebang together and see how the raglan seams look; I do have some concern that if the sleeve caps are too narrow, the lace will look overly stretched. (I won't be able to call her the Teenaged Stepdaughter for much longer, as she turns 20 in June--but the same initials work for Twentysomething Stepdaughter AND Thirtysomething Stepdaughter, so I can use TS for another couple of decades...can you imagine?  Do you think we'll still be blogging twenty years from now?! As for her birthday gift, I did knit her something for Christmas, but although another project for her has been in development for awhile--a sleeveless shell with a large openwork dragon slithering up the front--there's no way it will be done in time.) 

I'm having more trouble than usual deciding how I want to proceed with this design.  After my first bout of indecision regarding this lovely lace pattern, back in our get-acquainted days (by now Chinese Lace and I are so close, we can finish each other's sentences), I went through sleeve doubt, followed by generalized angst and dysphoria.  But we worked through our difficulties and emerged as stronger partners; or so I thought.  But now what?  All-lace sleeve, close-fitting, or ribbed to match the body, with a slightly belled lace cuff?  The nerdy part of me is leaning toward all-lace, just so I can get to know my beloved Chinese Lace's evil twin mirror image.