Liesel lace - possible xmas present

This is the lace I'm working on. I was originally going to not post projects until later since it may end up being gifts. However, I thought it would b better to post it in real time, and if you think it may be a present for you, don't read the post?!

I found a pretty scarf pattern called Liesel that I'll make to 1) do a stash bust (okay, reducing stash by one skein should not be called busting, more like...stash slight de-enhancing) It calls for TLC Cara Mia, which I have yippee!) and 2) (yes, there is a 2) to hone my newly acquired lace skills.

There is a knitalong on craftster right now.

However, when I casted on w/ TLC, it looked blech (could be due to the color (off-white). I had some GGH Lamour in corn (wool/angora/nylon) that I'm going to use instead.

Doing this lace thing is reminding me of DNA cable. So far, I have to keep looking at the pattern to make sure I didn't mess up the pattern (it's a 10 row pattern). Lace is much more difficult than cable. You can tink cable pretty easily, but w/ lace, it's very challenging.

And the thing I did learn (oh, only after the knitting the pattern for awhile) was to take a pencil and draw a line to separate the stitches into blocks of five. You'd figure that w/ my many years of schooling (+20 yrs) and my great cognitive know-how, would have figured out pattern recognition w/ groups of 5 instead of counting each row...gee, brilliant. So, I would highly recommend doing this in the future. It's amazing how much easier it is to knit a lace pattern.

The other observation I have is that even tho' the pattern is 10 rows, if I stop anywhere but row 10, I forget and it takes quite a while for me to figure out where I left off. This caused me to go off and research a side project (which then led to me forgetting which row I stopped at). I have the fancy Clover counter that you push as well as the cheapy ones where you dial, but I found that with 35 stitches/row, I find it hard to keep changing the numbers. Anyway, I love this:
Marker Chain

so I have to take a break from knitting and make me some. What a great idea, stick your needle through the next hole of the marker chain when you come up to it.

Did I mention I love love love gadgets...

An additional observation about lace knitting is that you really need to put point protectors on the needles so that yarn doesn't slip

The final thing is that the pattern claims that you'd be able to finish in 4 hours, but w/ my lack of attention span, it's going to take me much longer...especially since I've been eyeing Blueberry on Knitty...