Loving the Lace

It’s been a little over a week since my visit to The Fold, and I’ve already knit a pair of socks out of the Socks that Rock yarn I bought there.  That’s the glory of thicker sock yarn on larger needles.  But more on them another day.

When I started knitting again in earnest a couple of years ago, I was intrigued by lace knitting.   It was just so pretty, so delicate looking. 

I tested the waters with the Heart scarf from Knitty.  It was fairly simple lace, not too many stitches wide, the only real kicker was the k4tog on big needles with thick yarn.  I did like the end result, though:

So I thought I’d try some more lace.  I started a Cozy wrap, but it was just too much for an inexperienced knitter – at least it was for me.  Same with the Branching Out scarf.  I wasn’t able to “see” the patterns and read what needed to be done from row to row, or if I made a mistake I wouldn’t catch it before I was already 2 rows past it and my lace pattern had shifted on my needles.

Needless to say, these projects were frogged.  I gave up on lace knitting for the most part. I moved on to socks.

Recently, though, I’ve had the itch for lace again.  More specifcally, a triangular shawl.  Something fairly simple (walk before you run, right?) with an easy to memorize pattern.  Prefereably with a fuzzy wool that will be forgiving if I drop a stitch and won’t unravel too much. 

Don’t you love it when an idea comes together?

What you see here is a very poor picture of a really great project.  This is the Forest Canopy Shawl by Susan Lawrence, in Mountain Colors Weavers Wool Quaters “Wild Mushroom” (purchased via Destash).

This is just a couple of hours of knitting I did last night.  I didn’t want to put it down.  After a few rows, I had the pattern memorized, and had no trouble “reading” my knitting when I miscounted during a repeat (“wait, the double decrease should be on this stitch, oh, I see, I missed a yarnover, just tink back a few stitches – there, fixed.”). 

The pattern also has some excellent tips for first time shawl knitters, and has more detail than typical patterns.  I’m using the wool suggested in the pattern, a DK weight 100% wool with some bite to it.  This alleviates my fear of laceweight yarn (so skinny and delicate!).  It makes the knitting go a little faster.  And while I’ll still need to block it, I don’t have to wait until then to see the basic shape of what I’m knitting.

I fell asleep last night thinking of this project.  I think I’m a little obsessed.  But can you blame me?