Ishbel On My Needles
A few posts back I mentioned how I wasn't doing any Christmas gift knitting, which is true, more or less. I have a friend with a birthday in January who I wanted to knit something really special for so I made cruise through my handspun and found these 2 skeins of superwash BFL in the colorway Clematis Vine, spun from fiber from Susan's Spinning Bunny . They are a 3-ply Navajo plied to preserve the color changes, pretty much a chunky/heavy worsted weight from the first year of my spinning. Between the 2 skeins is nearly 500 yds, more than enough for Ysolda Teague's Ishbel from her book Whimsical Little Knits.
So I cast on about a month ago and knit away at the stockingette section. I admit that I prefer knitting the knit side to the purl side but I managed to get through it and launched into the lace section last week.
I figured it would be a great opportunity to test drive those new stitch markers I made myself so I slipped them on as I worked the first row of lace. By the time I had worked about 6 rows I realized that using them simply wasn't going to work because of the nature of the increases. I kept having 2 extra stitches to shuffle the markers over and it got to be rather annoying so I took them all off. I had also come to see that the stitch pattern is short enough I can do it all the way across the row using the Sl1 K1 psso as a marker since it only occurs once every pattern. It sure made it a lot easier to know where I was once I realized that! I think that was one of the main reasons I never knit much lace before. I could never seem to get my head around recognizing how the different stitches looked on the needles so if I had to stop mid-row I inevitably lost my place in the pattern and either ripped back or just picked a random spot in the pattern I thought was close to what the stitches looked like and kept going. Do I really need to tell you how the lace pattern turned out after a few dozen episodes of that? LOL! I think, somehow, I just thought that lace would magically come out of all those twisted stitches and yarn overs. It looked so lumpy and contorted I just couldn't "see" the different stitches I had done in the actual knitting itself. It's no wonder I could never figure out where I was or what stitches would likely stack on top to make the lace pattern. Now that I have more experience knitting lace things (I knit some nice small -successful- projects which REALLY helped!) which stitches are which is much clearer and I don't feel so overwhelmed by it all. That's not to say I won't still use stitch markers but now I'm not so terrified not to use them. It's a nice feeling. It's making me think about that lovely Swallowtail Shawl I cast on and struggled with - maybe it's time to bring out that basket again!
Anyways, I still have quite bit to go to finish this and I'm not placing any bets on whether or not I'll finish it in time.... but I'm sure going to give it my best shot! Cheers all!
Anyways, I still have quite bit to go to finish this and I'm not placing any bets on whether or not I'll finish it in time.... but I'm sure going to give it my best shot! Cheers all!
Posted by Gloria Patre at 12/21/2010 10:20 PM 
Categories: Yarn, Shawls
Tags: handspun yarn ishbel ysolda teague
Categories: Yarn, Shawls
Tags: handspun yarn ishbel ysolda teague
Great colorway! Go for that shawl, you can do it and will feel so great when you finish.
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Don't give up on the lace knitting Monica.....it's totally worth the aggravation!
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