(… over the four months of knitting the Frosted Cashmere Flowers Shawl as a wedding gift for my DD, Rebecca.)
But this was a bigger lace project than I’d ever tackled before.
Reading the pattern in preparation to begin, I find that this shawl has pattern stitches on both sides so no restful zooming back on the WS rows. Rats! Why didn’t I check that little detail as Rebecca and I were choosing the pattern at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC last January. I looked up the difference between ‘lace knitting’ and ‘knitted lace’ - this is "knitted lace" and I know I’m in for a bit more of a challenge. I think this counts as Lesson #1: What type of "lace" is it?! Oh, well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained….
The Hunt Valley Cashmere Yarn is SO gorgeous. And it allowed itself to be wound into lovely center-pull balls by my table-top swift and the ever-amazing ball-winder. Three balls. 1200 yards. So pretty. But the balls themselves seem a bit fragile. Out come the several little mesh bags I’ve saved from those cute cherry-tomatoes-on-the-vine I’ve bought every so often at the grocery store. The stretchy, light mesh bags work perfectly and kep the pretty yarn balls corralled throughout the project. (Not really a lesson, just a handy tip I picked up some years back. But highly recommended.)
Swatch, they say. I swatched. To play w/the yarn, and to make sure I could master the knitting-on-both-sides thing. Knitting the pattern was manageable, even tho I had to pay attention on both sides. I even got a bit carried away and knit more edging than the pattern called for. I did wash and block the swatch. Not that the size mattered much, but I wanted to see how the cashmere liked being washed and how it behaved. It LOVED it! The yarn was softer and even more beautiful after its swim and towel-dry. This was a good start.
But I could have made better use of the swatch to understand my personal lace knitting requirements. This is Lesson #2: Learn as much as you can from your swatch. Because after several repeats, I concluded several things that I could have figured out while swatching, and saved myself some tinking back and un-knitting a section of several rows. Fortunately, those are two skills I’d already mastered, but still… I could have saved myself some time and aggravation if I’d been a little smarter during the swatching phase.
Lifeline Lessons: I knew I would use a lifeline. But it took me a few repeats to figure out that the purl/WS last row of the repeat was the better choice, since there were fewer YOs to contend with. I used a bright pink fingering weight yarn, comparable in weight to the 2-ply lace yarn, and washed to make sure it wouldn’t bleed or shed on the beautiful off-white cashmere.
Chart Lessons: I knew to enlarge the lace chart to make it easier to read, especially w/these old eyes. I always highlight every other row. And I routinely use colored highlighter tape, all to keep my eyes on the right row.
But I found, for me, a second length of highlighter tape (putting one above and one below the current row) really helps my eyes stay on track and keeps them from getting so tired. And drawing a line down the center of the pattern repeat also helped.
Using Stitch Markers: I knew I’d use markers. Lots of markers. Fancier ones (M) to mark between the 36-stitch pattern and plain ones (m) to demarcate between types of stitches and the center of each pattern repeat. For this pattern: 2 st border (pm); 5 st section (pm); 9 st section; (pm – center of pattern repeat); 9 st section; (pm); 5 st section and end of pattern repeat (pM). Repeat this sequence for each pattern repeat. This shawl is 3 repeats across, so the marker sequence was repeated 3 times.
Counting helps. Yes, some days counting to three seems challenging to me. But it’s easier for me to stay on track if I count as I knit each little section of stitches. And each pattern repeat. Tedious, yes? Not really since I’m a process knitter. And my slow-go approach minimized my mistakes.
Ah but I still made mistakes. Here’s where the lifeline was invaluable. I move it every chart repeat – every 12 rows in this case. But I didn’t unravel the whole thing back to the lifeline: I only undid the section between markers that contained the mistake. This meant at most a column of 9 stitches to reknit. Of course, as I knit along on this 85” long shawl, I got better at recognizing mistakes as I came to them in the row below. Then they are easy to fix, sometimes from that side, sometimes having to turn my knitting around.
Four methodical months later, and w/an additional half a repeat to use up the beautiful yarn, my lace project was washed in Eucalan Lavender No Rise Wool Wash, then blocked to 18" x 85" on 2 sets of Knitpicks Blocking Mats with my Fiber Fantasy Blocking Wires from Leslye Solomon's Woolstock.
The bride adores it, and looks forward to a lifetime of being wrapped in its soft and loving enbrace. From Mother to Daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment