Sunday, April 7, 2013

Love of Lace ... and Cables


Continuing my affair with making lace stitches.
This time I added cables.  Reason?  I hadn't figured out how to use ssk and k2tog to form the lines I wanted.

After being very happy with the swatch (this time I did only one swatch), I went on and made a crescent shaped shawl with the new Malabrigo Lace Superwash. I saw it when I went to Jimmy Beans Wool during Spring Break and loved the feel of the yarn and the color variation, Lagua Negra.  It came in smaller skein of 50 grams and 355 yards.


I loved the yarn, loved the color, just not the shawl. The way crescent shawl ended up stretching the lace stitches sideways was not how I'd like to show the stitches. Somehow I couldn't block it differently.

So I decided to make a triangular shawl with the same stitches, hoping to lessen the stretching sideways.  I still ended up stretching the lace stitches more than I'd like during blocking, due to my fear of shawl might be a bit too small to wear. I should've knitted the shawl larger so it could be stretched more in lengthwise instead of width-wise, but fear of running short of yarn got the better of me. Nonetheless, the triangular shape definitely gives more option of which way to stretch than crescent shawls.



I used Isager Alpaca 2.  I love the look of the yarn and the resulting fabric very, very much.  It looks more rustic than it feels. But, knitting with it was kind of a pain due to its splittiness. Working 5 stitches cable without cable needle was not easy using such splitty yarn.

It was not super easy stitches to knit due to cables on just about every row, and not entirely intuitive placement of yarn-overs and decreases. But it was worth it, for me. It was worth it to see how the stitch design arrived at the complexity I preferred.

I am planning on making more lace stitches, maybe for more shawls. The vision in my head is to make them in colors that feel like old laces, like old memories rediscovered 



4 comments:

  1. Wow, the shawls and the lace pattern are absolutely incredible! You do such amazing work, Connie!

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  2. gorgeous!
    When will the patterns be released?

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    Replies
    1. Thank you.
      It will probably be available probably this summer. Sorry I don't really know when exactly, but most likely July.

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