In sickness and in lace

I am sick. As it has been nearly a full year since my last cold, I just wanted to take a moment to announce my misery, and at the same time write a paean of adoration for my vitamins, which - through the magic of folic acid - have kept me from feeling this miserable for the past ten months. As someone who was used to succumb to epic illness if someone so much as looked at me wrong, this has been a wonderful experience, and I cannot recommend folic acid enough to any and everyone who wishes to stay healthy. My latest failure in this regard is due to solely to my inability to remember to take said vitamins regularly, and I exonerate them fully of all wrong-doing in having failed to prevent my getting sick. Today's lesson, children? Take your vitamins every morning, or face the dire and misery-making consequences.

But you know the thing one shouldn't do when one's head is stuffed up like a bag of fiberfill?

Attempt to knit lace.

Lace is the most magical of all types of knitting, for many reasons. One, because the lumpy piece of misshapen fabric you cast off your needles turns into a beautiful work of art when properly blocked. This is probably the most talked-about wonder of knitting lace, and it is a marvel. As the Wendy-lady described a few days ago, a shawl that comes off the needles measuring a lumpy 38 inches in length can become, when blocked, a smooth 52 inch piece of detailed imagery.
Two, because you take the two stitches all knitters know, and increase and decrease the number of them in such a way that amazingly intricate pictures and geometric designs appear where formerly there was nothing. It is exceptionally gratifying to make a dragon, or a rose, appear with two sticks and some string.
And three, because it is exceedingly logical, practical, and orderly. Once you understand how the pattern you are knitting works, it is fairly difficult to make a mistake without it becoming apparent almost immediately.

That is, of course, if you are paying attention. Which is something one finds harder to do when one is stuffy-headed and unfocused. So we'll blame the 45 minutes I spent tinking the Swallowtail a few days ago on the onset of this miserable head-cold, and not on my own stupidity. After all, we know I'm not stupid enough to notice and fix half the mistake, congratulate myself on my keen attention to detail and growing ability to repair mistakes without tinking, and knit four more rows before it became apparent to me that I had failed to fix the other half of the mistake. It must have been the cold. Right?

That's what I thought. I'm putting the Swallowtail aside for the duration.