Lace: a four letter word

I am knitting lace. I'm not entirely sure that this is a wise thing to do.

My mother-in-law recently moved from Michigan to Florida. The last two Christmases I've given her nice warm store bought cashmere scarves. Now that she's migrated to a warmer climate a warm scarf wouldn't be of much use. I want to make something for her this year so I've been keeping an eye out for a nice elegant light weight wrap pattern. When I saw the Seascape pattern in this summer's issue of knitty, I instantly thought of my mother-in-law and ran out to buy yarn so I could give it a try right away.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

My sweater, you may recall, had vine lace pattern panels on the front, but that was different. That was all done in bulky weight yarn. Lace in lace weight yarn is a whole different story. This stuff is hardly thicker than sewing thread and it likes to tangle and snag on things. I tried feeding the ball from the center -- that was a complete disaster! I had to put the ball in a nice smooth high sided heavy bowl and feed from the outside of the ball.

The yarn is a bit fussy, but it's also quite pretty. I found the yarn at my local yarn shop. It's "Daphne" color 07 by Elegant Yarns. The website shows a lot more colors in "07" than my ball seems to have. Mine looks like it's mostly going to stick close to this purple and green you can see in the photos. It's 100% Merino and there are, I kid you not, 875 yards in a single 50g ball. I shouldn't have any trouble finishing this whole project with one ball of yarn.

My yarn shop had a couple balls of this stuff in a gorgeous flame orange color also. If I can get through this project and if it turns out nice (those are rather big "if"s at the moment) I'll have to go buy a ball of the orange.


I discovered quite quickly that this isn't a knit-while-you-watch-tv kind of project. It requires some serious concentration. This is the first project I've attempted that requires so much mental effort. There's a LOT of counting and keeping track and I've already had to compensate for a couple minor mistakes that were too difficult to fix properly without starting completely over.

Right now I'm using bamboo needles. I think I might need to get myself a #4 addi turbo lace needle and switch to that. The points on the bamboo needles are a bit too dull. I'm having to fiddle to get the points into the stitches and that's making the whole thing take twice as long as it would otherwise.

Also, it's nearly impossible to see how the project is going to turn out as I'm knitting because this will most definitely require blocking to give it proper shape. This is the picture from knitty:

And here's what mine looks like so far:

I've finished the end bit and the wavy pattern is just starting to emerge. I'm glad I started this so early. I expect it will take months to finish. And I won't know if this is something my mother-in-law will like until I get it finished and blocked... If I actually do manage to finish it.

Prior to this project I was a pretty monogamous knitter. I'd finish whatever I was working on before starting something new. That's no longer the case. I need my tv knitting. I haven't taken any photos of my other works-in-progress so I'll save those for later. For now, wish me luck conquering the lace.