Lace

Though a relative newbie to the world of lace knitting, I find myself hypnotized. The skinny yarn, the impressive results, the relative economy of it. What other project can take one ball of yarn and make a beautiful garment that makes people wonder? Ok...so it sounds like knitting socks too, a little bit. But with lace you get ooohhhs and aaaahhhhs, and with socks you tend to get a lot of people asking why you bother. Or the patronizing nods as you explain the positives of hand knit socks (until you finish a cute pair that the person just has to have).

I find myself particularly drawn to the mystery shawl concept. A person designs a shawl pattern, and delivers it to the knitter in installments. This keeps my interest, and doesn't present me with a huge pattern that I tend to feel lost inside.

This is Mystery Shawl 10 (the desginer's 10th, not mine). So far it's gorgeous in sock weight yarn. I can't wait to be finished and get this blocked so I can wear it. I envision myself wearing this in the evenings when we go on our caribbean cruise in Feb. I can't believe I may actually get to wear something I've knit in public...other than socks that is.

And here is the Halloween Mystery Shawl of 2008. It's been a blast to knit so far, and I'm going to be sad when it's finished. It is my very first beaded project ever, and a great one to learn the technique with. It's like the Yarn Harlot says about color work, each row seems to take longer, but they pile up so fast. The same thing has been happening with the beading, it feels like it takes me so long to knit a row, but it's growing really fast.

And here's a closeup:

I really need to borrow my mothers camera for these closeups, its so hard with a point and shoot to get good clarity. And on this particular section the beading isn't very obvious, but they're there. The second clue kicks the beading up several notches and it begins to get more obvious.

Several lessons have been learned during this project so far:

1. Size 12 steel crochet hooks can be really hard to find, and are the only size that works with size 8/0 beads.

2. Cats in the lap and beading do not go well together

3. The cat seems to know this and only wants to sit in my lap when I'm knitting this shawl.

4. Magnetic chart keepers usually used by cross stitchers are invaluable while knitting lace, much better than 20 post its.