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Lace - Next New Thing

Last week Bernet put out a free pattern for the Little Arrows Lace Shawl.

Little Arrows Lace Shawl
The pattern says it requires intermediate skill, but when it comes to knitting lace my skills are elementary to be sure.  This lack of skill however didn't keep me from giving the Little Arrows a try.

There were a few of reasons why this pattern was important to me now:
  • It seemed about time to put my fear of lace to rest.  I have been upping my game and lace would be a nice addition.   Many knitters fear knitting lace because it is totally unforgiving.  If one makes a mistake the work must be taken apart and redone.  Thus lace knitting requires much more concentration than other types of knitting.
  • Undoing lace is easy, but putting all the right stitches back on the needles is tough.  To create the holes that make lace so pretty a number of special stitches are used consecutively including the yarn over, (yo), knit two together (K2 tog), slip slip knit (ssk) and slip 2 (Sl2) knit 1 (K1) and pass the two slipped stitches over (psso).  All these different stitches makes for head aches after the undoing process is complete.   A life line is essential unless you are one of those knitters who never makes a mistake in the entire project; and I'm not one of those type of knitters.
  • Reading charts is not my forte, but charts are so much easier to follow when knitting lace than the written word.  So I'll be improving my chart reading skills as I make this shawl.
  • The pattern calls for crochet thread; it is what makes the shawl so drapey.  And for reasons I'm not sure I can recall, I happen to have some crochet thread in my stash.  Granted it is pink, but I think it will work up perfectly.
So on Friday evening I started the process and as expected it is a slow slog.  I have to count stitches at the end of each row to make sure the count is right.  The life line needs to be added after every 12 rows; removing it and then inserting it again slows one down as well.  So here's what it looks like so far with the gray life line showing.



As I prepared for this photo shoot I noticed a mistake.  Look at the center of the photo below.  See how there is a line of "Vs" running up the center and one row above the life line?  Then above that one row the "Vs" stop. That's the row on which I made the error.  (This entire process is called "reading your knitting, BTW.)   All I have to do is pull back to the life line and start this section again.  Thank goodness for that lifeline.



Stay turned as I move forward with this project.  If it works I'll be picking up more appropriately coloured crochet thread to make another.
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