Saturday, February 21, 2009

A Lace Scarf

A friend: "isn't making lace done by tatting?". Well that's one way. Also bobbin lace, crochet, and knitting.

blocking detail - the pattern really pops out

I've been wanting to try knitted lace. The Branching Out scarf pattern seemed a good place to start - it had all the lace techniques (well, most of them, and all the common ones) in it, and, in theory, wasn't a hard project.

I had a large amount of Schaefer Anne fingering weight yarn leftover from some socks, by weight it appeared to be sufficient.

And so I cast on, and started out. Having learned from the Pink Ribbon Socks that it is really annoying to rip the whole thing out when you've made a mistake and can't figure out how to fix it, I put in lifelines after each pattern repeat (10 rows). The first 6 repeats were error-free. Piece of cake. I almost did not put in a lifeline after repeat 6. Good think I did - I think I did repeat 7 at least 5 times.

Branching Out - my first foray into lace

Error analysis showed that something was going wrong between pattern rows 3 and 5. I'd probably forget a yarn over.

My error correction techniques involved blowing up the lace chart so it was more easily readable and marking out logical (to me) groups of stitches, putting markers in the knitting, and running an additional lifeline after row 4. And slavishly counting stitches at the end of each row.

It worked, and I proceeded along with much less ripping out. My plan was to use up the yarn, so I kept doing repeats until it looked like I wouldn't have enough for a repeat and the five final rows, and bound it off last night.

the scarf before blocking

Blocking wires had been borrowed from friend K; it is now blocking on the floor in a spare bedroom. It looks way cool.

blocked!

4 comments:

Kevin said...

I don't know much about knitting but it bothers me to see so much work go into this and then have NO comments.

So..... from a guy that doesn't know much about knitting but still wants to say "wow, that's way cool"

lynnef said...

Thank you! I'm pretty amazed that it turned out myself!

Anonymous said...

hej Lynne

this scarf looks very nice! i was just looking for some fancy lace patterns on the internet when i saw your work. it looks very light, airy and exquisite. did it take a long time to make? and would it be possible for you to share the patterns. i really would like to try it.
Julia
from Copenhagen, Denmark

lynnef said...

Julia - the pattern is here: Branching Out. I found it via Ravelry, world's largest free knitting/spinning/crocheting site ever. Check it out!