Building With Lace

Building With Lace

A quick post to show you a project that was NOT a quick knit. I've been working on this lace project called "Building With Lace" on and off since January.  This is a pattern by Michelle Hunter (AKA: KnitPurlHunter).  The yarn is called "Rylie" by HiKoo and the fiber content is baby alpaca, mulberry silk, and linen.  The color way is called "Sailor's Delight".  All of the Rylie yarn has "beachy" names such as sand, seagrass, abalone, etc.  

The project starts with a provisional cast on and then you progress from one lace section to another. There is a band of eight rows of garter stitch between each different lace pattern.  At the end, you finish with a sawtooth border and then you go back to the provisional cast on, pick up the live stitches, and do the sawtooth border on the opposite end. I timed myself to see how long it took me to work one sawtooth on the border and it took me about 15 minutes to complete one sawtooth... and there are 30 sawteeth (sawtooths?)… but whose counting, right?  By the time I got to the borders, I was really ready to be done with this project!

 It was challenging to block something so large.  I soaked the entire piece in water and then pressed out much of the water. I spread it all out over a large blanket on the floor to shape it into a rectangle as best as I could.  After it dried, I re-blocked the points of the borders on my blocking mats using blocking pins and my spray bottle of water to help them hold their sawtooth shape.  

I am really happy with this project.  I've purchased more of this yarn to make this again; I think the yarn I selected is called "Sand".  The pattern calls for beads which are primarily added to the borders... over 600 beads.  When I make this again, I may add beads. I am mulling that over right now.  I opted to not add the beads to my red version.  Another random note about this project is that I had to use needles much smaller than recommended in the pattern. The pattern calls for US Size 6 needles to get gauge and I had to use size US Size 4 needles to get gauge.  I was concerned about running out of yarn so I did fewer pattern repeats in a two sections to ensure I was not playing "yarn chicken" during the borders.  In the pattern, Michelle Hunter specifies that each border takes about 20 grams of yarn which is extremely helpful if you are concerned about running out of yarn. I weighed my yarn before and after I knit my second border and border #2 did take 21 grams of yarn.

As always, Michelle Hunter's pattern was an absolute joy to follow. I've learned so much from making her projects including "Building Blocks", "Building in Color" and now "Building with Lace".  What is amazing about these patterns is the video support you can find on Michelle Hunter's website which can be found HERE.  In the written pattern instructions for each section of the project, you are directed to her website where you can watch instructional videos for each skill in that section of the project (ie. provisional cast on, nupps, smocking stitch, sk2p decreases, and so on).

It was challenging to photograph this project to show you how lovely all the designs are. Here are all my photos... some photos are better than others but I am just uploading them all.  Forgive the random dog or electrical outlet in the photo background.