The Cardinal Rules of Lace Knitting



The Iditarod winner is in. What a crazy race at the end. I just read the results here. Check it out. And about what happened to King last night, when it was reported last night that it was his race to lose. What a heart breaker to lose. Such an intense race. But in the end, everyone is just glad to be alive I guess right?

I have until the red lantern to finish my shawl. Which is good since I am like only a quarter of the way there. Maybe.

I broke one of the cardinal rules of lace knitting with this project. It was pride that did me in. I thought I didn't need to do it. I was too good for it. You get the picture. What are the cardinal rules you ask?
  1. Use a life line. Take the time to thread a needle and put a length of floss or thread through those stitches periodically just in case you need to frog back. No one wants to frog back to the beginning just because they didn't use a life line.
  2. Use LOTS of stitch markers. Like maybe one every pattern repeat. I thought with only 7 pattern repeats I didn't need to do this. I could manage not messing up with only 7 repeats right? Wrong. I spent an hour trying to fix a decreasing section with dropped stitches. I didn't want to frog back to my lifeline because it was about 15 rows back. I was adding in lifelines every 20 rows. I thought I got the problem fixed only to look at it in the morning and find that I missed picking up 2 bars as I was hooking one stitch back up the ladder. I didn't fix it. I thought long and hard about it. And decided it wasn't noticeable and it didn't really bother me. I am 99% sure I won't regret it. I've decided some mistakes are worth fixing and others aren't. I asked my husband about it. He reminded me what I had told him years ago about Amish quilting. Rumor has it they put a mistake in their quilts so they aren't perfect. Because only God is perfect. Lol. My shawl is far from perfect. I didn't need to add a mistake to make sure. But I am still going with that theory.
  3. Block your lace knitting. I didn't knit a swatch (bad knitter!) I just cast on a lace stitch pattern I liked and started going. It is only a rectangle shawl/scarf so I thought I'll just wing it. So far so good. But I am excited to see how it looks blocked. 
I picked up this Knitted Lace of Estonia book by Nancy Bush at the library last week and can't seem to put it down. I love everything about lace knitting. The pictures in the book are beautiful and intriguing. What a fascinating history Estonian lace has. Before this book I didn't even really know where Estonia was. For others who are geographically challenged, it is neighbors Latvia to the south, Russia to the east, Finland to the north, and the Baltic Sea to the west. Haapsalu, Estonia became a resort town for the wealthy, in the early nineteenth century, leading the residents to start their cottage industry of knitting and selling lace shawls. Shawls were, maybe are still?, sold by weight and best ones, maybe all?, could fit through a wedding ring. That is pretty amazing.

Here are a few others things I've learned from this book:
Estonian lace is lace knitting and created on a stockinette stitch background. The other two well known lace traditions are:
Anyway I found that interesting and wanted to share. Now back to my lace knitting...

Sharing with Nicole, Tami, and Ginny.

Labels: , , ,