Lace! ...well almost

I actually haven't seen one of these since I was a kid. To be honest, I really think there are not as many now as there were... admittedly, there is less desert around here than there used to be and I don't spend near as much time in what desert there is left, but when I say I haven't seen one since I was a kid, I'm talking almost 30 years.
Derek and I went fishing last weekend, turns out my sister had the same idea and we ran into each other out at Willow Pond. As we pulled up, Mikah, my niece, had this lizard in her hand and was taking him back to the sage so I had to take a picture.
Below is Mikah closet, my sis Arlee and Derek.

Remember this?
I finally got through all the information about the Oomingmac Co-op in Anchorage, and all the delightful history of the musk ox and the unequaled fiber they produce called qiviut, to the real reason I bought the book to start with. To learn how to knit lace.

The author takes you through three steps to learn knitted lace techniques. All three lessons consist of knitting swatches with basic lace stitches, starting with size 7 needles and sport weight yarn, then size 5 needles and fingering, then the third swatch takes you into lace weight and size 3 needles.
It took me TWO (thats 2!) days to do the first swatch, knit rip, knit rip, I have no idea how many times. Then I remembered something, a tip, someone (Mim?) had given me about knitting lace; run a string through the stitches of a row you know is right, then if you mess something up in the next couple rows, you just rip back to the string. As I discovered, picking up stitches in a lace pattern is nearly impossible. After I started this, it was much easier to fix a mistake.
Here is my first swatch. (click for big, you gotta see that pin cushion :)
As I was trying to block it (on the foot rest of my recliner because I don't have another surface large enough to pin something like this to), Joy decided to help me.
I made a lot of mistakes that I hadn't realized I'd made but for the most part, I think I didn't do too bad for my first time! :)

I decided to put the foot rest down, Joy was playing in her toy box, but came scuttling back over, to check it out again.

Trust me, she's quicker than she looks....
And not near as innocent as she seems...
And much more determined than you might think :)
When she finally gave up trying to push her way through my legs (Jari and I both laughed at her tenacity so hard we cried), I went back to working on the second swatch. I've already had to frog it twice before I could put my string in, but its going ok now!