The Perils of Metro Knitting

I knit on the Metro every morning because that’s when I can get a seat. It’s much easier to knit sitting down – right? I rarely get a seat on the return so usually I read on the way home. Every once in a while, when I feel more daring or really need a knit fix, (stress – ya know?) I knit as I stand all the way home. The one constant in all of this is that, with the exception of a few people who ask what I’m knitting, people usually leave me alone. I’m not antisocial or anything, I’m just focused on what I’m doing.

Last night I was cursed with a chatty fellow commuter. He stood next to me most of the way home. It went something like this:

Chatty: What are you knitting?
Me: A sock.
C: Looks hard. I guess that’s why they have knitting machines.
M: Um, maybe. It's actually very relaxing.
C: I could never do that - all those little stitches.
M: mmm
C: I guess you really couldn’t do it the other way. I mean you couldn’t make a sock starting with the open end – right?
M: You can do it either way. It’s just a matter of preference.
...
C: I see women knitting on the Metro every day but they don’t have to look at what they’re doing.
M: I’m afraid I’d miss stitches if I didn’t look.
C: But they’re really fast too.

On and on it went. Until this:

C: Sorry if I’m bothering you.
M: No, not at all. It’s fine.
C: I don’t want to distract you…
M: Damn!

That last bit was where I realized that I’d somehow added a stitch and I’d need to tink back a bit to correct the error. I tried to downplay it but I was irritated. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have made such a dumb error if he wasn’t chatting away. The guy got off at the very next stop as I tried to figure out what had gone wrong. I wound up tinking 2 rounds at home last night.

Sadly, as I mentioned yesterday, that isn’t the only mishap that I’ve had recently. This is M.M. Cozy, my Amazing Lace teammate. I started her on Friday night and after 3 repeats I realized that I’d gone wrong somewhere and frogged the whole thing. I restarted it on Sunday and I’m back to the same point but with one important difference – I’m using lifelines now.

I’m using Morehouse Merino lace weight to knit M.M. Cozy and it’s been interesting. I put it on my swift to turn it into a ball and that took forever because the yarn broke twice and got a little tangled. It was very frustrating. Now, as I knit with it, the extreme thinness in some places is freaking me out. I’m so afraid it’ll break again. Have any of you used this before? Is lace weight yarn always like this?