Sunday 26 October 2008

lace knitting - gah!

When I first started looking at knitting sites and knitting blogs I noticed that a lot of knitters favour lace knitting and produce lovely shawls and scarves. At the time I thought – no, this is not for me, anything finer than double knitting is just too fiddly for me, especially as I generally have to reduce my needles by two sizes to get the correct gauge. Then I realised that lace knitting may be a fine yarn, but it is knitted on larger than expected needles (and gauge for a shawl isn’t crucial) and I also discovered the wonderful world of beautiful hand-dyed and hand-painted yarns. At the Knitting and Stitching Show this year I was seduced by a gorgeous skein of Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace in a pretty lettuce-y green. I chose Swallowtail as my pattern and even had a friend in mind as the eventual recipient of my work.
However, it turns out I was right – it IS too fiddly for me. I have had five attempts at getting started, keep ending up with the wrong number of stitches and it’s all too fine and fiddly to identify my mistakes. I think I will come back to it next summer when there are longer hours of daylight to knit in, but for now all that frogging is beginning to damage the yarn, so it will be put on hold.
Meanwhile I have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous and am knitting an eco string bag on big fat needles.

4 comments:

  1. uh, I don't think my brain would cope with more than a garter stitch scarf at the moment!!

    Loving the bag. The lacey yarn is a BEATIFUL colour though. Hope you can find something lovely for it. x

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  2. Hey, thanks for your comment over on my blog.
    Erm, you've inspired me. I've never knitted a proper lace anything before. And now, I've bought and received my yarn (the same as yours, but called 'grass') and pdf'd the pattern. gulp.
    wish me luck, please! though, I can't get to it yet, as I've other stuff to do before I can clear my time and my brain to cope.
    I blame you for it!!

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  3. Umm,tea and cake, I'm not quite sure how my failure to launch has inspired you - except in that "I'm not going to let this thing beat me" sort of way! I do wish you luck, but to be honest most people seem to take to it like ducks to water. Maybe when I have another go it'll work out ok.

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