Category Archives: My Year Of Lace

I have Kay to thank for this pattern. After finishing the Swallowtail Shawl, I wanted to knit another pattern in a similar style for someone deserving of shawly goodness who I hadn’t yet made one for. She suggested the Baltic Blossoms pattern, which was perfect. Nupps and a non-repetitve lace pattern, just like Swallowtail, but not the same. I didn’t stick totally to the pattern, I confess. I didn’t like the edging on the original shawl, so I just subbed with the Swallowtail edging, which worked perfectly, and gave me some pointyness. I switched the first nupp pattern repeat for beads and added a bead to each point of the edging as well, though I don’t think they show too well in the photo.

Like Swallowtail, this pattern was a quick, four-day knit. Though that was also because I worked exclusively on the shawl and didn’t spend all day on the internet.

The yarn colour is perfect for Kai. I wanted something rich and a bit wintery and if the yarn colour is called “Cranberry”, it’s just crying out to become a Christmas present, don’t you think? I bought three skeins of yarn “just in case”, so still have one to play with. I suspect I’ll add it to my growing collection of yarns-for-mittens…

The first of my festive knits is finished, and it’s barely November.

The pattern is brilliant. Sure, it’s just four rows repeated over and over again with an edging, but the result is so pretty and as Heather said, it looks kind of old-fashioned/antiquey and elegant, which also describes my Grandma, so it will be perfect for her. The whole scarf weighs barely 50g, which means that it’s as light as a feather. In the end, I got carried away with the rhythm of the pattern that I kept going for longer than I had intended and this is what is left over from the second ball of yarn:

Pretty close to running out again. I seem to like knitting on the edge . The finished scarf is approximately 145cm (57inches) in length, which is possibly a little long, but that means there’s more scarf to wrap around a couple of times for a very warm neck.

The yarn, as I have said before, is just beautiful. I’ll be buying much more of it in the future. Fantastic price, generous meterage, soft like a kitten, knitted up evenly, no knots, blocked easily and need I say more? Shame the colour is a PITA to photograph! The closeup of the edging is truest to “real life”, the outside pictures are too pale.

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In the meantime, I’ve also had a rethink about the other knitted gifts I was planning. I don’t want to be stressed out and knitting like a madwoman trying to get everything done this year, like I usually do. And though it seems shocking, some people would be just as happy with something that isn’t knitted (unbelievable as it sounds)! So a couple of items have been crossed off the list and the sense of relief I feel shows that it was probably the right thing to do.

However, I’m knitting for the small people’s teachers this year. Usually I buy them each a Lush gift box. But although the products are gorgeous, I am at heart a packaging strumpet, and sticking unwrapped products in a box of popcorn doesn’t scream “nice gift” to me, no matter how ethical and bunny friendly the contents are. So instead I’m planning a couple of stashbusting projects in gorgeous yarns – a pair of Fetching mitts for one teacher and a tootle of my own trumpet with a Bertie for the other. They will be beautifully giftwrapped with ribbons and tissue and all that palaver, but if I can get recycled wrapping I will, so that I don’t feel too evil.

I had resisted the lure of the Swallowtail pattern for some time. I’d admired Diane’s for a while, but with plenty of other shawls to knit it wasn’t high on my list. Then Kay and Kai finished theirs in quick succession and I suddenly got a real urge for nupps.

This shawl is made extra special by the yarn I used – the one skein of Wollmeise that I bought before everyone went loopy over it and now you can’t get a skein unless you have ninja website stalking skills. Which I am too lazy to try to attempt. This skein has been sitting in my stash for a year, with the occasional petting, waiting to be used. I realise that I could have probably sold it for a stupid amount of money on eBay, but I can’t help feeling that yarn is meant to be knitted and enjoyed, rather than hoarded just so that I can say I have a skein of rare yarn. Anyway, being made into a shawl means that the yarn will be seen and have a lot longer life than if it was worn on the feet. Sadly, the colours just don’t photograph well. The yarn is a blend of blues and teals, but it looks almost solid in the photos. So you’ll just have to trust me when I say that it is shimmery and jewel-like.

The pattern was the usual Evelyn Clark masterpiece. Beautifully written and clear and not a head scratching moment to be had. And a quick knit, easily completed in four days. Like Kay, I don’t see why a new lace knitter couldn’t knit this shawl. The only really tricky manoeuvre is the p5tog for the nupps, and that’s not hard, just fiddly. I found using a 2mm needle to purl the stitches together worked best for me.

I really like the size of this shawl and think it’s very wearable, though this one is destined to be a Christmas present. Does anyone have any recommendations (other than Icarus, which I already have my eye on) for triangular shawls of a similar size? I could knit smaller versions of patterns such as Forest Canopy or Matilda or Flower Basket, but I like the different pattern elements in Swallowtail. Maybe I need to sit down and see if my designing mojo can help me with this one…

More birthday knitting revelations (and a happy birthday to Cairi for yesterday)!

Pattern: Peacock Feathers Shawl by Dorothy Siemens for Fiddlesticks Knitting
Yarn: Colourmart Cashmere/Silk 3/45NM Laceweight, about 80g in “Kingfisher”
Needles: 3mm Addi lace – whizzy!

I think I mentioned before that Mr B gave me this and another Fiddlestick pattern for Christmas a couple of years ago. As with a lot of people, I regularly see a pattern and think “Must. Have. Now.” so I’ve amassed far more patterns than I can ever reasonably knit – I probably have the pattern version of SABLE – but at least I know I have them safely tucked away, just in case…

When the yarn arrived from Colourmart, I knew that I had to use it for this pattern. And that I had to give it to a person who is more obsessed with teal than you’d think was humanly possible.

It was a very enjoyable knit. The entire pattern is charted with no written directions other than the pattern notes, so probably not for you if charts make you cower. Plus you have to mentally reverse the chart for the second half of the shawl as they’re mirror images, rather than symmetrical. However, as every row is different, the amount of paper needed to type out all 200+ rows in full would possibly mean the loss of several forests. Not to mention the scope for errors. And there wasn’t a single one!

I also learnt another new skill with this pattern – the crochet cast off loopy edging thingumy. It took a LONG time to do, because it was a new skill, after all, and I was using a 3mm crochet hook which seemed tiny. I like the way it looks now, but it was a real pain to block!

The yarn was divine to knit with. I was alternating between this and the Mystery Shawl which is knitted in Baruffa Cashwool and honestly, the Cashwool actually felt rough in comparison. That’s how soft this yarn is. Plus it just goes on forever, so I reckon I have enough left for another shawl in the same size.

Firstly, happy birthday to Diane! And seeing as it’s her birthday, I can finally reveal some secret knitting!

Pattern: Large Rectangle in Leaf and Trellis Pattern from Victorian Lace Today
Yarn: Garnstudio Alpaca, 6 and a tiny bit of a 7th x 50g balls, colour #6347
Needles: 4mm Inox circs for the slipperyness

Making this present has taught me that no matter how much I organise my knitting, giving myself months and months for a project to be done, it doesn’t change the fact that I am the most fickle person on the planet and the longer I leave a project, the less urge I have to pick it up again and finish it.

But I am very pleased with the final pattern I chose. The finished shawl is HUGE. It’s as tall as me and probably as wide. I knew Diane would like the yarn as she picked it herself from my stash, and there’s a similar pattern in her Ravelry queue, but even so, it’s still nerve-wracking giving a present to another knitter.

This is the first pattern I’ve completed from Victorian Lace Today and I suppose as it’s My Year Of Lace that if I didn’t knit a pattern from the book *this* year that I never would! The pattern was error-free, although the cast on directions were vague. It required a provisional cast on, but that really wasn’t obvious and it wasn’t til I was knitting the border that I realised it would be quite useful..! I picked up the stitches from the cast on edge instead which a bit trcky and something which I would have liked to avoid, but not too traumatic.

I also didn’t enjoy knitting the double and triple joins for the corners. To me, they looked messy and bulky; using a fingering weight yarn probably didn’t help with this. And sure enough, once the shawl was blocked, they flattened out nicely. And it’s another technique I’ve learnt, which is always a good thing.

As I blogged previously, I had the horrible experience of running out of yarn within a centimetre of finishing the shawl. I had reduced the number of repeats for the centre section in the first place because I didn’t want to run out of yarn and also because the shawl was pretty much big enough. In fact, it took almost as much yarn to knit the border as it did to knit the main section – roughly 2½ balls. Fortunately, the spare ball arrived really quickly from Scandinavian Knitting Design and though I didn’t expect it, it was even the same dyelot.

So why is this post titled “The Perfect Summer Shawl”? Well, yesterday was wet, cold and miserable and the shawl came in very useful indeed.

So Issue 2 of The Inside Loop is online and I can finally share a couple of finished objects that have been hidden away.

Pattern: Wild Strawberry
Yarn: Fleece Artist Italian Silk, 2 x 100g skeins in “Fruit Punch”
Needles: 3.75mm Addi bamboo circs

Summer knitting is always trickier than the rest of the year. But I hope that at least one of the projects in the new issue might be the one you take to the park or the beach this summer.

Ene’s done!

Pattern: Ene’s Scarf by Nancy Bush, from Scarf Style
Yarn: Live 2 Knit Claudette, 1½ skeins, Moss colourway
Needles: 3.25mm Addi bamboo circulars

What can I say? I adored knitting this. Even with having to cast on over 300 stitches, it’s one of my favourite shawl projects ever. The pattern is easy to follow, knits up quickly and Nancy Bush is a genius.

The gorgeous cashmere yarn was perfect for the pattern. The variegation was very subtle, so didn’t overpower the design, but made it more interesting than having a block of solid colour. The stitches show up clearly and despite only using about 600 metres of yarn, it blocked out to a fair size. Not as big as a shawl, but will keep my neck warm.

See how happy I am with my scarf?

With freezing weather promised next week, I’m going to get a few chances to wear it before Spring arrives.