lace challenges

In a moment of weakness or insanity or both I joined the summer Amazing Lace knitalong. Weakness because I love knitting lace and the notion of a whole bunch of people working on lace and sharing it makes me want to be included. Insanity because adding another thing with deadlines and challenges, however casual and fun, could make my delicately unbalanced life teeter even further towards the brink of being unmanageable. But it's just knitting, right? It will help me focus my summer needle endeavors.

As I understand it, the goal is to set a lace challenge for yourself over the course of the summer. I knit a lot of lace anyway, so I could just continue meandering along with my current backlog of projects. Or I could try to step up the pace a bit: finish not one, but two shawls this summer. (Thus decreasing the pile to be knit to only 8 or 9). I could go really crazy--knit three or four!

This should be done, no doubt. But the word "challenge" keeps niggling in the back of my mind... it would certainly be challenging to knit a lot. But I'm hankering for difficulty of a different sort. Knitting one fine wool lace shawl is much like knitting another. Mind you, I'm not saying it's all easy or anything to be sneezed at. I love it, but it's becoming comfortable. I want to stretch myself a little more, see what other avenues I can explore with lace and knitting.

On the left is the shawl I've been working on lately. It's the Peacock Feathers Shawl in fine merino wool. I think I'm using size #2 or #3 needles. In the middle is a cone of 20/2 perle cotton. I have lots of this in various colors. The large cone on the right is linen singles. Here's a closer look at the three yarns:

You can see that the cotton and linen are a little thinner than the laceweight wool. Not only that, but cotton and linen have no stretch and no "poof". The cotton is not a finer version of your soft squishy cotton knitting yarn. It's basically thread, no give. So is the linen, only more so, and with the added quality of a lively wiry mind of its own. There is a strong tradition of knitted lace edgings and table items made from cotton thread, but I've never tried it. I think I rely on the softness of wool to forgive some of the imperfections of my knitting--a sloppy decrease here or there, deviations in tension. I'm not sure how I'd handle knitting with such unforgiving fibers. So that's exactly what I'm going to do.

My challenge is to knit some linen lace by the end of the summer. My wool shawl(s) will be like pacers, teammates to keep me in shape and familiar with lace. The cotton will be practice for the ultimate test: knitting linen lace. The finished article will be taken from a vintage pattern book of some sort (I haven't decided which one yet). I'm not aiming for anything huge, just something to show I can do it.

Now let's see... where did I put those #000 needles?

Comments

[diana]

Now that's a challenge! Go to it girl!