Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Lovely lace shawl: part 1

After a few false starts I have managed to finish the first panel of the Lovely Lace Shawl. I am learning the importance of each stitch. I also learned when you slip stitches it indeed matters whether you slip them knitwise of purlwise...in this case slipping them purlwise results in a mess of twisted stitches, while slipping them knitwise allows the pattern to rise to the surface as if by magic...I was on row 35 of 56 when I made this discovery. It was soon after I realized this that I decided to start over. I also learned the difference needle size makes on lacy patterns such as this. My first attempt was made on sz 4 needles (they are the smallest circs I have). While it looked ok, the pattern did not pop out of the knitted fabric like I would have hoped. So for the second attempt I broke out my 14" size 2 Susan Bates. Within a few repeats of the pattern I was convinced the switch to smaller needles was the right one! The solid sections of the fabric are indeed more solid and the super pointy needles are making knitting this loosely spun yarn much easier. I know that as the shawl gets bigger I am going to want to move this to circs (which I will have to order) but for now I am happy.

Lovely lace shawl flows
as water in the river
turbulent then calm.

2 comments:

DAWN said...

It is looking very lovely!

jae said...

looks beautiful, makes me wanna try one.