Lace Knitting

So, lately, I've been working on Christmas Presents - it might only be June, but I would really prefer not to feel pressured to sit and knit for 12 to 14 hours straight 3 days in a row to finish things up. Once was quite enough, thank you.

I'm also taking the opportunity to learn knew knitting techniques. I've been having fun with lace knitting lately. Well, mostly fun, anyway.

It is fun to see how increases and decreases make what, at this point, really looks like a rumpled, hole-y mess, and then to spread it out over my lap and see the lovely pattern that's actually inside. If I can maintain enough patience for it, I might really like lace knitting.

Of course, for right now, it's a good thing I'm only trying simple stuff - the scarf I'm making right now is a very simple pattern, a variation on the feather and fan - I repeat the same pattern every right side row, and purl every wrong side. Means that now, almost half-way in, I have the pattern memorized, and all I have to do is keep careful count. After ripping out about 6 inches in because I'd ended up with the wrong number of stitches, and could not for the life of me figure out where the mistake was, I wised up - I now count my stitches out on every row, to make sure I haven't done too many YO's or decreases.

I do really like the way this looks, and I'm sure my Aunt Chris will appreciate it, too. (I'm not posting a picture here, just in case, even though I want to - presents should be a surprise.) The only real downside on this particular pattern is that it isn't reversible, which I think is an important thing, for a scarf. It is, however, probably going to be wide enough to fold in half (which it wants to do anyway), so it should be alright.

Unfortunately, the non-reversibility isn't the only thing I'm regretting, somewhat, about this pattern. This is actually the second pattern I've tried out for my aunt - the first was a pretty lace motif at either end, followed by plain stockinette which I was supposed to graft together, since the motif needed to be worked right after casting on at either end. The problem with that was that I didn't have enough yarn for a densely-knit scarf on small needles, and, since I'm rather broke, trying to find another skein in the same dye-lot didn't seem like the best idea. My goal is to finish off each scarf I'm making this year with only one skein of yarn each.

So, I ripped out that scarf and started over with a new pattern. Fine, except, since I had cut the skein into 3 pieces (one for each end, plus some set aside for fringe), I now have more ends to weave in, in the middle of the scarf, which is going to be very annoying, with lace.

Okay, I'll admit that really, that should be a fairly minor concern - it probably won't be very noticeable to anyone but myself.

The other thing is that I'm wondering what to do about my sister's scarf, now. The plan is to make a scarf for each of my aunts, my grandma, my sister, and my mom. I'm not making them all to the same pattern - if I did, I'd be sure to hate that last couple of scarves, and that doesn't seem right, to me. Nor will I be using the same yarn for all of them - I can't, since my mom's allergic to wool, the type of yarn I'm using right now. But I've already started my sister's, using a yarn she'd actually bought herself once, but since she's decided not to try to learn knitting, doesn't have much use for.

So far, no problem, right? Except that my sister's scarf is a simple ribbed scarf, with a slit for closure, but nothing special. And the yarn is not suitable for lace or cables or anything, anyway. But I kinda feel like she'd be getting shafted, if I'm making lovely, complicated(-ish) scarves for everyone else, and hers looks rather pedestrian by comparison. So now I'm debating making her another scarf similar to the ones for my aunts.

Yay for creating more work for myself!!




As a side note, I don't think I should ever bother with Twitter - I'm clearly too wordy for it. I'd intended this to be a fairly short post...