A Year of Lace

One of the things I love most about knitting is that, no matter how much you know, there's still so much more to learn about. I remember the year I decided to really figure out fair isle; I must have knit three or four man sized multi-colored pullovers one after the other. I love watching the patterns develop row by row by row. There's a real rhythm in two color knitting, a chant specific to each row and its colors that moves me to a Zen place (one-one-two, three-one-three, two-two-two.) It's very hypnotic, and one of the reasons I knit.

And learning to strand with a color in each hand, which makes a beautiful, fluid fabric, was a great accomplishment to me

But that was then, and this is now. This is The Year Of Lace.

I don't know why lace has taken over my knitting preferences lately, but it seems like every new project I pick up is lace based. It started at the beginning of the year with the Brenda Cardigan, and lace has followed into just about every project I've chosen since with rare exception. Some of my projects have been true lace weight lace, the yarn as thin as cobwebs. Some have been knit of quite heavy yarn, the lace weighty and substantial. And others have been a little of both.

Of the four classes I took while at Stitches South, two were about lace. And actually, since each of those two were full day classes, they are each the equivalent of two regular classes, so I guess you could say I took seven classes and four of them were about lace. But I digress.

The first of the Stitches lace classes was about freeform lace, run by Myra Wood. I've taken other classes by Myra over the years, and she's a hoot. Freeform lace and I, however, are not a good match; the concept is that you can knit lace that is not, by it's very lack of design, symmetrical. Being the daughter, sister, and wife of engineers (and a closet obsessive compulsive) I find this somewhat disturbing. A yarnover with no attached k2tog is bad enough, but freeform lace asks one to accept many many instances of unpaired holes in the fabric. I tried, really I did, to "go with the flow" but I'm just not that kind of girl. (Well, my knitting's not "that type" of knitting.) I spent hours in that class with lace weight merino on size 5 needles, making random holes in a 5" wide strip of knitting. It was frothy. It was ethereal. It was random. My brain takes delight in recognizable patterns. The minute I got that swatch home I pulled out the needle and frogged. Thanks, Myra, for the attempt to shove me out of my comfort zone. Sorry I couldn't oblige.

The second class was on Shetland Shawls. I wasn't familiar with Shetland shawls when I signed up for the class, which is why I signed up for it. The instructor, a lovely woman named Joan Shrouder, was knowledgeable and well prepared and a great knitter. She knew her shawls. What I came to understand is that Shetland shawls are based on garter stitch. Both EZ and Jared Flood have a deep love and respect for garter stitch; not so I. I just don't like the way it looks. Garter stitch always looks a little juvenile. I know it's fast. I know it's easy. I just haven't found a way to appreciate it's deep simplicity. I loved learning how Shetlands are made. I loved learning how to build a square shawl from the middle and add the borders and edgings in one piece. I just wish it hadn't all been garter stitch. So I guess Estonian lace is more my style.....

Buffalo Girls Won't You Come Home

Stitches South was everything I had hoped and then some. The classes were very good, the instructors learned and effective, and the other knitters were a marvelous resource. But the Market! Ahh, the Market. The vendors were friendly, well stocked and very helpful. The big surprise was the amount of spinning fiber I found; in booth after booth were braids or bumps or bags of fibery goodness. So many, so beautiful, that it hurt my heart to know how much of it couldn't come home with me. (After all, Stitches is supposed to be about the knitting and the yarn, right?) I did bring home a little bit of fiber in addition to the yarn stash expansion (which, vast as it was before I went to Atlanta, is significantly bigger now....)

There was fiber everywhere; Miss Babs Handyed had beautiful handdyed rovings, and there was raw pycazz to be had at another booth. Carolina Homespun had everything from merino/silk blends, rare breed rovings, quivit (which was almost as expensive as raw gold) and bison fiber. No joke, the undercoat from american buffalo, in fluffy one ounce bags, calling my name. Call it fate, call it kismit, but I had taken my Louet Victoria along just in case. As it turns out, just in case I found some buffalo fuzz. What could I do? I was helpless in the face of the inevitable. An ounce of Buffalo Girls fiber was mine! As soon as class was over that afternoon I hurried back to the hotel room and began to spin. A fine, lofty, soft laceweight thread emerged from the cloud I held in my hand and I was happy. At least, I was happy until I ran out of fuzz about two hours later. Two hundred yards of single ply lace just wouldn't do. I needed to feel that je ne c'est pas of silky softness sliding through my fingers as I spun just a little longer.

So I went back the next day and bought another ounce. And spun another two hundred yards. And then I plyed them together.

Wish I'd take a photo, because once plyed, I finished the yarn as suggested on the card that came with the fiber. What started as a decidedly lace weight two ply didn't end that way after a hot bath and a severe beating; the yarn bloomed. And bloomed. And once dried bloomed some more. My 400 yards of singles lace was mostly 200 yards of 2 ply fingering by the time all was said and done. Which really wasn't quite enough yardidge for the Buffalo Girls Shawl I had planned. But it was lovely, lovely yarn.

The Rest Of The Story: Once we arrived home after Stitches, I found the April installment of my fiber club waiting for me. It was several ounces of Shetland wool in several colors, including a medium brown that, while not the exact shade of the spun bison, was close enough to make a lovely border . Another 200 yards of 2 ply almost-fingering later, and the yarn requirements of my Buffalo Girls Shawl were met.

Production notes: The Buffalo Girl Shawl is an adaptation of the Vernal Equinox Shawl by Ryhmä Lankakomeron. Size US 9 knitting needles and portions of the first several clues from the KAL were knit until I ran out of handspun. About 29" from center back to lower edge. I think it's beautiful.

Keep Me in Stitches

Next week I'll be attending Stitches South for the first time. Well, not the first time I've been to a Stitches event, but the first time there's been a Stitches South. (Say Hallelujah.) I attended Stitches East for six years in Atlantic City and Baltimore when I lived in Maryland. By happy happenstance I managed to attend a Stitches West in Santa Clara one year as well. Each one was Knitter's Heaven, and when DH and I moved to Florida I couldn't justify a plane trip and a hotel (not to mention the stash expansion) just to learn more ways to knit and purl, as it were.

But Atlanta, well, that's close enough to drive. So off we go.

My experiences at Stitches are probably different than many, maybe most, attendees; for one, I've always gone alone. (No knitting buddies to distract me from my mission.) I have yet to attend the fashion show or the award dinner (more an issue of time than interest, however.) And I have taken classes all day, every day that I attended. (Yes, I come home brain dead every time. And I love it.)

I pretty much taught myself to knit back in the 70's. As proud as I have always been of my skills, I have to admit that I made rookie mistakes for many many years; stupid things like not getting gauge (and then being surprised that the article didn't fit!) or substituting an inappropriate yarn totally unsuitable for the project. Stitches helped change all that. Slowly, certainly, but my skills have been so very much improved by Stitches classes and the marvelous instructors that I can't begin to know what came from me and what came from them.

A random, and partial, list of things I learned at Stitches:

I can knit backwards. Sounds like a little thing, but it has made a real difference on small projects.

All my fair isle knitting is done with a color in each hand with floats one stitch wide. The resulting fabric is as beautiful inside as out. And this was learned at The Philosopher's Wool booth in the Stitches Market, demonstrated by no less than Ann Bourgeois herself. (You can see her teach the technique on their website here.)

My oldest grandson has a pair of authentic twin-knitted booties I made in a Stitches class. I will never make another pair (the technique stretched my capabilities to their limits) but the experience and knowlege gained was wonderful.

I know at least 15 cast-ons and matching cast-offs (and regularly use at least four of them.)

Did you know that there are "rules" about how cables move? There is a logic to which part goes under and which part goes over, and how they interconnect. And I learned that at Stitches.

How many ways can you shape a waistline? Many more than you would think, and each has a different function if you want to design a sweater or top.

I can knit a lace top and have the shaping for the armholes turn out as mirror images of one another. Just when and how to omit a yarn over or use a left- or right-leaning decrease is now in my repertoire.

I'm sure there are a dozen more things I learned at Stitches that are buried at the back of my brain. But like college was more about learning how to think than what to think, Stitches is more about learning how knitting works than about what to knit.

What more could you ask?

A Rose by Any Other Name

This is the current state of my Hemlock Blanket, design by Jared Flood. The yarn is Caron's Simply Soft Paints in the Sticks and Stone colorway; very masculine. I decided to knit it in an acrylic yarn for my grandson-to-be; for some reason, my kids don't want to hand wash baby things. Go figure. The colorway is quite nice; in fact, it's as nice as many an indie-dyed skein I've knitted. The problem is that it's acrylic. Not that I have anything against acrylic yarns, except that they shed, pill and look generally crappy in pretty short order, and I can see a little of that already happening in the center of the blanket I haven't knit with acrylics for many a year, but I remember this being the problem with acrylics back in their heyday. I had hoped man made fibers had advanced more, apparently, than they have. But it may be yarn specific; I knit the Baby Surprise Jacket below for the same grandson in a Vanna's Choice print that is surprisingly cushy, lofty and smooth.

I remember making a top-down pullover six or seven years ago out of Lion Brand Homespun. The sweater wasn't finished before it started to look like monkey fur. So answer me this: if yarn can be spun from bamboo, corn, milk byproducts, soy and petroleum (you do know that's where many "man made" fibers come from, right?) why can't we come up with manufactured yarns that don't fuzz?

I Get By with a Little Help

I like knitting lace - most of my recent knits have been lace. I'm not much of a Knit Along girl, though, but I thought I'd give it a try, so I joined the Ravelry KAL for the Vernal Equinox Shawl, and this is the result. I have made shawls in the past, but always rectangular ones, never a triangle or semicircular.

The interaction of other participants was new to me; I live in an area where I don't know any other crafters, and have become kind of a Lone Knitter, if you know what I mean. No one else to look at my work as it progresses, no one else to oohhh and aahhhh over the intricate pattern or the subtlty of my ssk left leaning decrease, no one to recognize the beauty of my Wollmeise. I don't get a whole lot of feedback, as it were, except from DH who, bless his heart, would praise a garter knit scarf on par with this lovely shawl if I knit it. So when another knitter complimented my finished Vernal Equinox I was first surprised, then pleased, then, in an odd way, felt a little exposed. I mean, no one who knows anything about the craft has ever looked at my work before. No one who could tell if I screwed up the pattern in row 189 has ever had the opportunity to point that out to me. All of a sudden my own standard for what's "good enough" seems a little low (and I'm known as something of a perfectionist.)

Being part of a larger community could be both a good and a bad thing........

It's a Compromise

The third version of the sleeves is where I'm going to stop. The cap sleeves didn't work and the 3/4 sleeves made me look square. So just-to-the-elbows it is. All in all I like the look, and the cashmere is light as can be. So now we're off to other things.....

What's New?

I'm working on the second version of the sleeves for the Cathedral Cardigan and it looks like I'll be starting on the third version at any moment; I just can't seem to find the right fit. But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I finished my car project - my very first Baby Surprise Jacket (I've been an EZ fan forever; hard to believe I have several little ones to knit for and have never made a BSJ!) and the Vernal Equinox KAL shawl; isn't it lovely?

Working on these projects simultaneously had me thinking about the concept of monogamous knitting. I've heard that there are knitters who have many many projects going on at the same time; they put one down and pick up another like changing clothes. I have read about projects that sit unattended for weeks, months, even years at a time, waiting for their turn to come back into favor with their maker.

But I'm not like that. I have a real need to finish things. There are no bags with half knitted sweaters buried in the back of my closet. There are no socks missing a mate. I have no avoidance issues with sewing up and finishing.

Now, I do have more than one knitting project going at the same time; there's always one in the car that I work on when my DH is driving; there's one on the sofa where I knit when I sit with my family and watch TV; there's one in process on my knitting machine and there's one I'm designing. And there's no cross-over; the car project never sees the one on the sofa, the sofa project doesn't go for rides, and the design project, well, she's just a little special, like a new baby. And when each project is finished, another new project takes its place. Each project is like a child, and I stay with each until it's off the needles and ready to leave the house.

It's not exactly monogamy, but it's close.