Lace, knitted lace, and more knitted lace

First a quick report on the lace weekend, and then normal blog service will return latter this week.

Well, I went, I knitted, we talked and we ate, and then we knitted some more. And that, my friends, was about the sum of last weekend. I attended the inaugural Dunedin Weavers and spinners knitting groups lace retreat. 14 of us had peace and quite and no interuptions, no phones, no tv, just yarn, instructions, help, wine and good good food. There was at times silence as we all held our mouths in that funny shape we find helps our knitting along when it is tricky, at other times there were words that will not be typed here. And in between teaching Lorna catered food like you would not believe. In a word YUM. I do apologise about the quality of the photography in this post, I was in a hurry and did not use daylight, and so these are not as clear or as accurate as I would like.

So what did I knit?



First the blue triangle above, because it had the most complex graph and I decided if I was going to learn reading a lace graph I would use a graph with lots of symbols. Yes that could work, if you were very clever and very pedantic, but then there would also be a requirement to line up all the holes in a neat pattern. That was apprently beyond me at first. Much tinking occured. Lace is harder than it looks. After one pattern repeat I was ready to try something else - that means much easier.


So I tried this blue leaf swatch, which is a beginnings of a Annie Modesit lace scarf from a recent Interweave special, that was in a magazine I took away. I had tried before at home but the chart for the double slip stitched boarder had eluded my simple brain. Not last Saturday, I sussed it, I can do it now. With a little or a lot of help from my new knit buddy Lorna.


and then I knit this,
Which is what most of the group knit, I started late Saturday, when they were half way along. It is a mini version of a Russian lace shawl, designed to teach all the required techniques. I will not show you what it should have looked like. By that stage I was in a hurry to catch up and over thought the pattern, leaving out an important slip one wyib that defined two of the internal sides of the central square.

I did learn a neat new alternative to grafting, sort of plating together the stitches from two edges as you slip then through each other and off the needle. Very cool - close up here.