I think I'm going to ritually burn a pattern.

Honestly, it's not the pattern's fault, but hey....someone has to pay. I'm working on the Anniversary Mystery Shawl by GoddessKnits, celebrating her store's 3rd year. It's a pi-shawl, with each clue doubling in size. I managed to get the first clue done, was halfway through the second clue and had to set it aside to work on the Spring Mystery Shawl, which was 1.5 clues behind---and I'm really eager to finish that one. I finally got within 4 rows of being caught up on the Spring Mystery and (since the last clue wasn't out yet) set it aside to work on the Anniversary shawl. Here's some pictures during Clue 4, I think:

Clue 1 and Clue 5

Clue 2 and Clue 4

Clue 3

When I picked up the Anniversary shawl last night, the stitch count was wrong. I dropped decrease stitches when frogging a row back several times. I started working on it at row 9 of Clue 2 and ended up back at row 6, then had another problem and frogged again...and again...and finally, took the whole damn thing off my needles and frogged it back to nothing. sigh

Then, today, the last clue for the Spring Mystery Shawl was released...and reading it over, I'm totally lost. Totally. Lost. So, do I work on the border which eludes me or do I cast on for the umpteenth time for the pi-shawl? Maybe a ritual pattern burning would somehow help?

On the fun side of knitting, I spent Friday afternoon, teaching a friend to knit. I learned a couple things myself. First, I am a horrible teacher. I'm a Sinister Knitter, she's a righty. Now I know what it's like for a righty to try to teach a Sinister Knitter!

I also learned that it's a process. There's a couple small things to learn and then (much like math), you build on that. So, a cast-on, the knit stitch and the purl stitch. Once you've got those, you branch out into k2tog, s1k1psso and so forth. We only got as far as the knit stitch. I'm not even sure I showed her a good cast-on. But, I did leave her several of my books which I've learned from, so she can read and learn what I didn't do a good job explaining. Still, she was knitting!

I showed her my mom's favorite dishcloth pattern, so she could work on something that only needed knit stitches. I just had to show her how to do a yarn-over. I was reasonably sure I couldn't work on lace while teaching, so I worked on the beginnings of my own basic dishcloth. I'd forgotten how soothing mindless knitting can be. In the process, I think I simplified the pattern, so there's less "which row am I on?" Instead of increasing at each end every other row, I decided to increase at the far end every row. Now, there's no need to stop and check "which row is this?"

With the reminder of the joy of mindless knitting and me becoming an "Auntie", I think there's going to be a baby blanket in my future!