Something missing from this blog of late has been knitting. I had been sailing along on the wedding shawl but then hit a huge wall and had been unable to get past it. For several months.
I completed the main part of the shawl and had only to make the narrow knit-on border. This would be a new experience for me. But I had already figured out knitting lace--how hard could a tiny border be?
Well, pretty hard. It had me flummoxed. Three new skills at once were too many--the provisional cast-on, the lace pattern itself, and the actual attaching of the border on the shawl. It all sounded doable on paper, but when I tried to put it all together I ended up with confusion. And confusion in that blasted Kidsilk Haze is to be avoided at all costs since it's virtually un-froggable.
I tried knitting the lace pattern in scrap yarn to get a handle on the pattern's workings. I knit it over and over and over again. Only 12 stitches and an 8 row repeat, for goodness sakes! I wrote out each row and that helped, but stitch counts still weren't coming out right. And being unable to handle a pattern over a measly 12 stitches was damn frustrating.
I'm very happy to say that I sat down with it all over the weekend and figured it out. Eureka! The clouds parted and Kidsilk Haze gods smiled down on me. Everything came together.
It all came down to figuring out the charted directions on binding off TWO STITCHES in the pattern and most especially, realizing that the border isn't actually knit on a separate set of needles. Slap to forehead!It's all happening!
5 comments:
My first thought: so very lovely!
My second thought: it would have to be Rowan "Bitch to Frog" Kidsilk Haze for this particular situation!
-Helen
Caroline will be the recipient of a superb shawl...you're skill & tenacity a remarkable!!
Congrats on being able to decipher the pattern's edging. It really looks wonderful and will be an excellent gift.
Wow! That is all too confusing to me. I don't think it will be on my must knit list.
And it is beautiful, too.
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