Playing With Lace

Good Morning!

The day is now sunny and the breeze is blowing away the rain clouds of yesterday and last night.  My buddy JT is having a morning snack of crackers while sitting with me at the table.  He has his hands over his ears complaining that the train whistle is too loud.  Poor boy!

Because of the time of year, lace is in the forefront of many knitters' to do list, the perfect summer knitting.  I must say, I'm in the same boat.  I have always used a commercial lace pattern to knit from mostly due to my thinking that lace is to difficult to chart.  I do prefer charts to the written word. 

I was reading a craftsy.com class schedule and found a class advertised as Lace Shawl Design with Miriam Felton.  After watching the class preview, I think that this will take away my hesitation. Now I can pick up my needles and start swatching with the yarn I just purchased just for this purpose from Craftsy as well.  It is a beautiful single ply 50% Merino and 50% Silk in a simply luscious Raspberry color.  It was an incredible bargain too!  The deal was two skeins of this beautiful lace weight for $18.40 and shipping is free!  I just got it yesterday and it is definitely Yummy!

The project on the needles is lace but this one is a free form lace.  It was in my Summer 2001 Interweave Knits Magazine.  I don't know about you, but I will put a sticky note a page that peaks my interest, and then due to so many projects on going, the magazine is set aside.  I came across it again on the knittingdaily.com web site galleries.  What splendid timing!

I had some "Pashmina Cashmere" that I received from a dear friend who was sharing her stash.  In this stash were a few balls of Pashmina left over from one of her projects.  Perfect!  So, I took the elements from this gorgeous sweater "Coral Cardigan" by Nancy Eiseman and charted up my own  "Scribble Lace." 

Out came the graph paper and I started charting some basic lace stitches.  No two rounds are the same and that is what gives it a "coral" look to it.  I took the needle size up a little bigger to make my stitches more open.  I am very happy with the outcome. 

So put your Brave on, click on the links above and try your hand at some lace stitches.  You will be surprised at how easy it really is.  The trick is marking your place and graph paper and counting your stitches to make sure you have the correct number.  Have fun with this, I certainly am.

As a side note, my website is coming along.  Feel free to stop by for a look,  youandmeknit.com. 
Follow my blog on my site by clicking the Fiber Space button or go to knitnanny10@blogspot.com.

Happy Knitting!