The Lazy Knitter Doggedly Pursues Lace Knitting
With the Woodland Cowl victory securely under my belt, I returned to my Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi Shawl with renewed vigor! The 4-row lace pattern is easy to remember and with a mittful of stitch markers I was cruising along quite comfortably! How smugly I completed my 20th round, then knit one round, knit 1 / yarn overed the next round, knit the next round , adding a stitch marker every 10th stitch to set up my next lace pattern and discovered I was out of the markers I wanted to use (odd!) so I took a break and made up a bunch more. Easy and fun!
These are made with dyed Buffalo Berry seeds, personal favorites of mine as they only grow on the prairies. These were given to me by a friend but I would love to find some more of them in the wild myself!
When I was done, I finished knitting my round and then counted up my markers. I was expecting there to be 20-something of them since this round should have been 200+ stitches.... 45, 46, 47... WTF??? I re-checked the pattern then re-checked my last section. Yup, 20 rounds.... since the number of rounds should double every section... hey, there's 20 rounds in the section before it too... that means...... OMG!!! In that moment I could have died!
And of course, being a Pi shawl, there was NO other solution than to riiiiip out..... no amount of fudging and fiddling can fake your way out of this bind!
Looking at it this way it's much easier to see I shouldn't be anywhere near having 500 stitches on my circular needle! So let this be a warning - lace knitting and fatigue are a deadly combination! It took me nearly an hour to pick up all those stitches again and worse, I know there are lots of yarn overs I didn't get. (Please, no lectures about "lifelines" - I do know about them, I just never imagined I'd need one on this project - d'oh!) That means I'm going to have to find the beginning stitch of the lace pattern and try to figure out what I need to have so every section has the correct number of stitches that are in the correct state of knittedness. And since it's going to take a loooong time to sort THAT I unceremoniously stuffed it into it's project basket and (pouting) took out some Louisa Harding Mulberry 100% silk in a subtle copper color and cast on my very first Faroese shawl from the Stahman's book.
I've had (and treasured) this book for a very long time, promising myself I'd cast on a "real" Faroese shawl one day. These are designed to be knit from the top down (traditional Faroese are knit bottom up) with many variations in design so I picked my favorite and got started. You start with an edging strip and pick up stitches. Then there's a row of "make 1 twisted left, knit 1, make one twisted right, knit one" that I puddled my way through. It was a very long row and I was finding their "make 1's" rather tedious so, being late at night, I did my usual, glanced at the book, finished the row, purled back and got to the next row. As I was working on another "make 1 twisted, knit 1" row I came to a part that said "knit 20" and when I had knit them, discovered I wasn't half done the row when I got to the part that said knit the border stitches. How strange.... how did I end up with SO many more stitches than.... hmmm... didn't I just say something about lace knitting and fatigue being a poor combination? Indeed! I missed 3 digits in that "tedious" row, the ones that said "K18". Funny how a "little" thing like that can have you - dare I say it? - ripping out stitches yet again! So there I was - again! At least I only had to rip back to the picked up stitches and it was only 26 plus the border, really nothing, in comparison to the Pi disaster. So I purled across to set up my increase row only to find the picked up stitches WERE the purl row and I now had a garter ridge on the right side of my shawl. I didn't know whether to growl or cry! I tinked back, used a sticky note to mark the book - closed it - and went to bed! I had absolutely had my fill of "lace knitting" for one Sunday! LOL!!
To end on a happy note, I am on row 5 today with no mistakes! Cheers all!
When I was done, I finished knitting my round and then counted up my markers. I was expecting there to be 20-something of them since this round should have been 200+ stitches.... 45, 46, 47... WTF??? I re-checked the pattern then re-checked my last section. Yup, 20 rounds.... since the number of rounds should double every section... hey, there's 20 rounds in the section before it too... that means...... OMG!!! In that moment I could have died!
And of course, being a Pi shawl, there was NO other solution than to riiiiip out..... no amount of fudging and fiddling can fake your way out of this bind!
Looking at it this way it's much easier to see I shouldn't be anywhere near having 500 stitches on my circular needle! So let this be a warning - lace knitting and fatigue are a deadly combination! It took me nearly an hour to pick up all those stitches again and worse, I know there are lots of yarn overs I didn't get. (Please, no lectures about "lifelines" - I do know about them, I just never imagined I'd need one on this project - d'oh!) That means I'm going to have to find the beginning stitch of the lace pattern and try to figure out what I need to have so every section has the correct number of stitches that are in the correct state of knittedness. And since it's going to take a loooong time to sort THAT I unceremoniously stuffed it into it's project basket and (pouting) took out some Louisa Harding Mulberry 100% silk in a subtle copper color and cast on my very first Faroese shawl from the Stahman's book.
I've had (and treasured) this book for a very long time, promising myself I'd cast on a "real" Faroese shawl one day. These are designed to be knit from the top down (traditional Faroese are knit bottom up) with many variations in design so I picked my favorite and got started. You start with an edging strip and pick up stitches. Then there's a row of "make 1 twisted left, knit 1, make one twisted right, knit one" that I puddled my way through. It was a very long row and I was finding their "make 1's" rather tedious so, being late at night, I did my usual, glanced at the book, finished the row, purled back and got to the next row. As I was working on another "make 1 twisted, knit 1" row I came to a part that said "knit 20" and when I had knit them, discovered I wasn't half done the row when I got to the part that said knit the border stitches. How strange.... how did I end up with SO many more stitches than.... hmmm... didn't I just say something about lace knitting and fatigue being a poor combination? Indeed! I missed 3 digits in that "tedious" row, the ones that said "K18". Funny how a "little" thing like that can have you - dare I say it? - ripping out stitches yet again! So there I was - again! At least I only had to rip back to the picked up stitches and it was only 26 plus the border, really nothing, in comparison to the Pi disaster. So I purled across to set up my increase row only to find the picked up stitches WERE the purl row and I now had a garter ridge on the right side of my shawl. I didn't know whether to growl or cry! I tinked back, used a sticky note to mark the book - closed it - and went to bed! I had absolutely had my fill of "lace knitting" for one Sunday! LOL!!
To end on a happy note, I am on row 5 today with no mistakes! Cheers all!
Posted by Gloria Patre at 5/5/2011 11:42 PM 
Categories: Shawls, Classic Posts
Tags: knitting shawls Elizabeth Zimmerman pi shawl faroese shawl
Categories: Shawls, Classic Posts
Tags: knitting shawls Elizabeth Zimmerman pi shawl faroese shawl
Oh Monica...soooo sorry you had to frog!I have began my second start on a small shawl that begins with 363 sts and this time I'm using markers...no mistakes. I would luv to have that lace book but I recently bough Margaret Stove's lace book. Beautiful copper silk yarn. I have a skein of reddish Mulberry silk from Tanis Fibre Arts.
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