Kai-Mei

I am learning a lot knitting these socks.

My first lesson was to stop over-thinking things.
This pattern is written for one sock at a time and I love the 2-at-a-time plan. It does not allow for the knitter to get tired of the pattern and only knit one sock, which for me is a good thing. Ordinarily there is no problem, but these socks are unique, and the instructions are different for each sock.
I tried to write out step-by-step instructions to deal with the fact that 2-at-once puts stuff out of order.
It frustrated me. A lot.
So I decided to just jump in and start.

It all made sense when it needed to. I just had to stop thinking about it so much and just do.

The second thing I learned was that a knitter can always trust the simple beauty of a Cookie A. pattern. It looks complicated and tricky, but in the end? It's a simple 8-line repeat that is elegant and graceful and perfect.

Third, and actually fourth and fifth as well...
I had a needle blow out just as I finished one of the lace edges. I immediately started reloading the dropped stitches onto the blown-out needle and Deb ran over and found a replacement needle.
I saved the stitches and moved on.

So third is: bad shit happens. It just does.
Fourth: having someone nearby who knows exactly what you need is vital to success.
And fifth: after the bad shit happens you can move on. You can replace lost stitches. You can still make it work.

I promise.