Sunday, July 25, 2010

This weekend's knitting

Been busy knitting this weekend.  I just finished up my Woodland Scarf and, as you can see... it's on the blocking mats now.  I'll try to take some nice photos tomorrow. I used all but a few feet of the yarn for the scarf so it's a nice long length. I think the scarf will make a nice gift for my friend, Rene'.

The other day I bought some lace weight yarn.  I learned a lot from my first attempts at lace knitting this weekend.  First of all, I should have wound the yarn into a ball at the yarn shop. Within moments of unwrapping the hank of yarn at home, I just about had a yarn catastrophe!  It was hard to keep the featherweight yarn under control and get it wound into a ball.  I first started with the Swallowtail Shawl Pattern.  Then I switched to a shawl pattern called Lavalette.  I got even further on the second pattern and I totally "get" the pattern. What I learned is that I need some smaller stitch markers.  See how in the center of the shawl there is a vertical line down the center? That should be a column of single knit stitches flanked by yarn overs on both sides. My stitch markers (plastic rings) totally got in the way and made for really loopy yarn overs.  Now that I get the pattern, I think I could follow the pattern without the stitch markers.  All said and done, I was not happy with how the shawl was coming along, so I ripped out the entire thing after I snapped this photo.  I just found a third shawl pattern called Simple Yet Effective Shawl.  I really underestimated how hard knitting with lace weight yarn would be. I've decided to go with the simplest pattern possible just to get the feel of knitting lace... I'll save the Swallowtail Shawl for another day. It's beautiful but much more complicated.

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