To start the new year I am starting a challenging new project. It will be a beautiful lace project using a pattern loved by many on Ravelry, the Swallowtail Shawl designed by Evelyn Clark. The pattern can be found as a .pdf from this site, Portfolio - Evelyn Clark. I will also be making a couple of popular modifications, using beads instead of knitting the nupps in the Lily of the Valley pattern and doing 19 repeats of the Budding Lace pattern instead of 14 to make it larger (thanks to some help from MintyFresh for the modification math)
Material list:
- Malabrigo lace weight yarn (100% merino wool)
- size 5 knitpicks circular needles
- split stitch marker
- concentration
- focus
- patience, patience, patience
Using the knit picks needles is working well for 2 reasons:
- they have nice sharp points which makes it a little easier to get into this really delicate yarn and,
- bonus benefit of making it super easy to insert a lifeline (this is a piece of string or waste yarn inserted through any row that makes it much easier to unravel stitches when the inevitable mistakes occur). Check out this great tutorial video on how to do lifelines with and without the KnitPicks needles for more details.
this is a nice weight lifeline to use for the lace weight yarn and it is pretty easy to thread through the KnitPicks needle hole
More helpful hints from my knitting expert friend, Jardee:
- use the charts, not the text and note that the symbols sort of represent how the finished stitches look (for example a yarn over is represented by a circle (hole) and the right slant symbol is a right slanting knit 2 together decrease)
- put in a lifeline after every pattern repeat (for example, this shawl uses the budding lace pattern (a 6 row pattern) 19 times, so put a lifeline after every 6 rows).
- Tie a loose knot in the lifeline after insertion just in case the lifeline snags on something, this will prevent it from accidentally coming out.
- use 3 lifelines; insert at repeat 1, at repeat 2 and when you insert the lifeline for repeat 3, check everything looks OK and then remove the 1st lifeline. This is the most conservative lifeline strategy, but I will definitely follow this for my first lace project.
- use a sticky note to cover the rows above where you are working to make it easier for the eye to follow the current row, the pattern and not accidentally start on the next row.
- how to use a crochet hook to insert beads instead of having to pre-string all the beads. See Jardee's great little instructional video below (this is her first video tutorial, doesn't she sound like a pro!)