learn to knit lace

I might have gone too big for my first lace pattern, a lace shawl. It doesn’t look ridiculously complex, but I keep getting lost on the lace pattern rows. I’ve stepped away from it for now (after starting/ripping back/restarting/ripping back several times now) and in the meantime I’m crocheting a shawl out of some of my laceweight yarn while I wait for the frustration to dissipate a bit.

I think for my next step, before I go back to this lace shawl pattern, I’ll find a pattern for something in heavier yarn than laceweight and try that first to get some practice with the techniques used before I go back to knitting with the laceweight. All my knitting up till now has been fairly straightforward stuff, with the most complicated things I’ve done being socks and a cabled scarf.

I highly recommend starting with a dishcloth. It was so easy…well, compared to my expectations. :) It wasn’t the most complicated pattern-Traveling Vines from Smariek-but it wasn’t the easiest one I found, either.

It’s not perfect, since my tension wasn’t always even, but hey, it’s a dishcloth! I think it will help when I get my Knit Picks Options needles in; the sharp points are supposed to be a BIG help with lace.

So glad I did it. I’m about to do another pattern; my eventual goal is a nice lace shawl.

Not hard at all. Just finished my first project – “Branching Out” on knitty.com

My aunt recently died, and I inherited a drawer full of my grandmother’s lace. I never knew this grandmother, but she and I were apparantly a lot alike. My mother tells me sometimes my dad feels sad, looking at me, because I have her body and look like her, with different coloring.

The lace is breathtaking and so different from anything I’ve ever seen. I washed it in vinegar to remove the yellow, blocked it carefully, saw it take shape before my eyes just as it probably did for her.

I often feel jealous of my sister, who always says “my grandmother” just because I never knew her and she did; I wish I could have know this person that I’m supposedly so much like. If I had known her, I know I’d have learned to make lace from her own hands and not the silly tutorials I’ve been reading. My sister never learned any of her handicrafts, and I secretly snicker at her for missing out on something so special.

I will learn to knit lace.

This was one of my original 40 things, and I’ve done it! Yay! It’s really cool to see the pattern start to come together especially when you’re thinking, “there’s no way this is going to be lace!”

I’ve knit my first lace scarf. Can’t wait to start the next project!