I'm not sure I can master this...maybe I need to go back to thinking about knitting socks

I took a knitting class today. Eeeeek. It was hard. I can knit, I can purl, I can do yarnovers...but can I count? Can I read a chart with my wiggy eyes?

It's a mixed lace scarf, with 3 or 4 different lace patterns in it. the beginning of it is Cat's Paw. Go here to see what some woman named Jen has done with Cats Paw.

Pretty huh? Well, the one I'm doing is different, it's got 3 cats paws in a row by 3 cats paws in each column.

And it's 53 stitches across with this Louet linen/merino yarn. Right now I am not liking the yarn. I've never worked with anything this little and it splits so I'm having a tough time. How many times did I think "FUCK" during the hours I was there? If you guess about 500 million you'd be in the ballpark. I didn't say it tho.

The teacher didn't really give me a choice of what yarn to use, just pointed me to the Louet yarn and said choose one of those there.

Here's the other thing I don't like. The scarf is wide, it'll probably be more like a wrap than a scarf on me. I like my scarves about 5 inches wide, my neck isn't that big. This is probably going to be about 12 inches wide maybe more after blocking.

So this class isn't really Beginning Lace, it's more like Make a Lace Scarf class. And Let Me Give You A Chart To Stare At While I'm At It - I'm sure the lace is a beginning stitch but I was expecting more of a here is how you make the pattern and you must use 12 stitches plus 1 for each paw. More paws, more repeats.

The good thing is there is lots of purling in between rows of slipping, knitting, yarnovers and knit 2 togethers. At least purling is easy to read on the chart. Cuz, hahahaha, the chart doesn't show purling! That's right every other row is not shown and every other row is purling.

Can't I have a chart with every row shown?

My eyes had a field day with the slashes, some go this way /. Others go this way \. Remembering which is slip,knit,passover and which is knit 2 together is terrible for me.

And I call this fun. Hmmmm.