Unst Stole: Inching Forward

The Unst Stole by Sharon Miller (Project #7 in Heirloom Knitting) is currently my longest-standing WIP, and after 2+ years I am eager to finish it up as soon as I possibly can. But, as Treebeard would say, Let's not be hasty... It's not really up to me anyway. This project insists on setting its own pace, because it is incredibly painstaking, and anytime I try to rush, or work on it under less-than-perfect lighting conditions, or when I am tired and/or not fully alert, I always live to regret it. So, frustrating though it may be, I have learned and must continually remind myself that slow-and-steady is the ONLY way to make any real progress. It will all be worth it in the end.

Fortunately, I have managed to devote quite a bit of time to the Unst lately, so there are some very encouraging results, although my hope (wish??) from this earlier blog post that it might actually be done by the end of summer will almost certainly prove to have been overly optimistic. By the end of the year is more like it, or maybe before the snow flies. We'll see. At any rate, the good news is that I can now report (with pictures!!) on all three sections of the pattern: center, borders, and edging.

I. Center
It took me three tries with two embarrassingly long hiatuses in between to get through the 476 rows of my modified center pattern, but on May 1st I finally reached that point. I did a total of 9 repeats, beginning and ending with a framing band of mirrored ferns and alternating in the middle between the original pattern and an adaptation of the Shetland Twins motif. Here's an old picture of the bottom frame and the first several repeats, plus a new one showing the entire center. Click on either thumbnail to get a closer look.

II. Borders
The Unst borders have always been my favorite part of Sharon Miller's design. There is something about the delicate lace trellis with its different diamond motifs, each of which is distinct and yet beautifully harmonized with the others, that I find utterly captivating. My one complaint is that the 136 rows of the original charts are over too quickly. That's not a lot of yardage, especially at the tiny gauge that I get with Gossamer CashSilk and 1.5 mm (US 000) needles. So for my stole I decided to double the length of both border panels, which should dramatically showcase the trellis/diamond pattern when the piece is worn.

Below are three photos to illustrate exactly what I did, since I did not simply repeat the charts as written. The top photo shows the frame separating the border from the center below it, and the beginning of the first border panel. In the lower left you can see how it looked when both charts were complete (June 6th). According to the original design, the body of the shawl would have stopped there. Note that there are 5 full diamonds in the trellis, each containing a different pattern (ABCDE), with half-diamonds above and below. I replaced the motif in rows 1-11 (i.e. the bottom half-diamond) with the more symmetrical/rounded one found on p. 218 of HK, and also wrote out a chart to complete the half-diamond at the top (F), which enabled me to continue the trellis with the original series of diamond motifs in reverse order: ABCDE-F-EDCBA, ending with the substituted 11 rows once again. The result is perfectly mirrored and balances nicely. I finished the 1st border panel on June 18th, and was amazed at how effortlessly my two-year-old provisional cast-on allowed itself to be unraveled so that I could start the 2nd identical panel, which I FINALLY finished on July 17th, bringing the stole to 70% completion, with only the edging left to round the whole thing off. As always, click on any of these pictures to get a closer view. I recommend this for the largest one in particular, which does not show up very well on a small scale.

III. Edging
Make no mistake: the edging may feel like an afterthought to the body of the stole, but it is a MAJOR undertaking all by itself, representing 30% (i.e. nearly 1/3!!) of the stitch-count for the project as a whole. The original Unst stole edging with its boxy squares in garter-stitch has always struck me as rather clunky, so I went hunting through Heirloom Knitting again and chose a more delicate pattern that seemed to strike just the right note. It is called the Queen’s Lace Edging (HK, p. 129) and fortunately has the same 20-row repeat as the original. It already includes a strip of faggotting along the inner edge, but I decided to incorporate the spider-hole insert from the original design as well.

A kind friend on Ravelry helped me do the math, which came out to a satisfyingly even total of 150 points: 20 across each of the short sides and 55 up/down the long sides, with sufficient ease before and after each corner to make the turns and still lie flat. The same Ravelry friend also advised me to go ahead and pick up stitches all the way around the stole on a long circular needle — 1420 of them, to be exact — to which the edging could then be attached. This took the better part of a day and was an ENORMOUS headache at the time (I won't pretend otherwise), but all that work up-front turned out to be a terrific investment. The Big Win was that it enabled me to double-check the spacing and stitch-counts and make minor adjustments in advance, rather than trying to do this on-the-fly and quite possibly having to rip out portions of the lace itself if something went awry. Now that I have all the stitches neatly held in reserve with markers at intervals to help me count, I no longer have to worry about whether the spacing will come out right and can therefore concentrate on the actual knitting, which poses enough of a challenge all by itself.

This third and final series of photos contains a close-up of the first 3 edging points, a wide shot of the entire stole, showing all the stitches bunched up on the circular needle with markers every 20 stitches along the edges and every 10 stitches near the corners, and finally my most recent picture showing the first *10* edging points (= halfway across the first short side).

The Queen's Lace is a 20-row repeat, as I mentioned, and the spider-hole insert is a 6-row repeat, so they line up together only occasionally (i.e. once after 1.5 repeats of the main pattern and again after 3 full ones). It's intricate and fiddly, with the added complication of working left-handed (chart dyslexia, anyone?). I think there's just a learning-curve and that it will speed up once I get the hang of how everything fits together. But I've been at it for several weeks now and still haven't turned the 1st corner, because I kept having to rip out bits. Two steps forward, one step back. Yesterday after yet another minor setback, I did manage to knit three or four points in a row without mishap, so maybe it will finally start to go more quickly from now on. That would certainly be nice, because at the rate I've been going so far, I estimate that it would take another 8 MONTHS or more to finish. Sigh. Clearly, no matter what, this edging is going to be with me for quite a while. Slow and steady, slow and steady, slow and steady...

Faith, Hope, and Love: A Wedding Gift To Remember

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
— I Corinthians 13:13 (English Standard Version).

It was a close thing, but by averaging ~5% of the project per day over ~20 days, I managed to finish the rectangular lace piece in gossamer silk for my sister-in-law and her new husband and to have it blocked and dried in time for our trip to the wedding. What a relief!

As mentioned in this previous blog post, the pattern came from the book Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling, as shown on p. 87 (charts on pp. 88-91). Although the design in question might or might not itself be a genuine Niebling, it is certainly a splendid example of German Kunststriken ("Art Knitting") from the second half of the 20th century. The yarn was Gossamer Silk from Heirloom Knitting. Since my sister-in-law with her undeniably "WASP-ish" ethnic heritage was marrying a man from Brazil, it was in keeping with the international flavor of the wedding that I chose that scrumptious silk fiber which is cultivated in Japan, spun in Italy, and sold from the UK. Michael at HK was kind enough to answer my questions about the provenance.

We arranged for the newlyweds to open the gift at the brunch hosted by the bride's parents on the day after the wedding, mostly so that I would get to see their long-anticipated reactions. I have developed the habit of typing up a cheat-sheet to go along with each knitted lace item that I give as a gift. This is partly to inform the recipient of the lifetime guarantee that should it need washing (or, God forbid, repair) it need only be sent back to me, since I have all the required blocking tools. But it also allows me to share various informative background details about the yarn, the colorway, the designer, the pattern, etc. My sister-in-law read the description out loud to the assembled friends and family, and she choked up a bit when she got to this part:

The pattern does not have an official name, but I chose the title from 1 Corinthians 13 (see above), because if you examine the motifs, you will see crosses (for Faith), leaves and flowers (for Hope), and heart shapes (for Love). The construction of the piece is also laden with wedding imagery, in that it starts as two separate squares, each knitted outward from the center until they reach a sufficient size. Then they are seamlessly grafted together and the elaborate edging is worked all the way around the outside of the resulting rectangle. So two pieces that began each with a life of its own become one and in the process create something new and beautiful together, just as the two of you are doing this weekend as you start your married life.

The finished dimensions of the piece were a generous 25" x 40". It started out, as indicated, with two separate but identical squares, which were then grafted together. Given my previous adventures with grafting lace, I was thrilled with the near-invisibility of this attempt, aided by the fact that the pattern at that point was nothing but stitch, yarn-over, stitch, yarn-over, etc. Near the start of the edging pattern, having noticed that the stitch count did not change over the course of the 42-row chart, I switched from 1.75 mm (US size 00) needles to the next size up (2.0 mm = US size 0) to help the fabric open up when blocked. In addition, the blocking process was GREATLY facilitated by the chain-stitch loops conveniently running all the way around the outer edge as a result of the laborious and time-consuming crochet bind-off (for which I used a 1.65 mm crochet hook).

Knowing that I was about to give the piece away and that it would be moving to Brazil with the newlyweds, I took lots of pictures while I still had it in my custody. Here is a gallery of my favorites. Feel free to click on any of these images, as always, to get a closer look. I should add that I did not have time to weave in all the loose ends until we reached Baltimore, where I managed to snatch a few productive hours sitting in our hotel room between family gatherings. So the occasional stray thread appears in these photos, taken before we left home.

One final note... This last photo was taken by another sister-in-law at the post-wedding brunch. It shows the newlyweds veiled behind the piece as they held it up for everyone to see while I pointed out and explained some of the motifs of the lace pattern to them. So yes, that's me on the right in the black sundress that didn't always zip up so easily. ;-)

My Niebling Adventure Begins

Herbert Niebling (1905-1966) was a master of German Kunststriken or "Art Knitting," who brought us the famous Lyra pattern and many other fancy doilies and tablecloths. Many of his designs feature elaborate flowers and/or foliage in fascinating geometric arrangements, and he is said to have had the unusual gift of being able to look at something (e.g. a vase of flowers) and translate what he saw directly into lace knitting. Read more about Niebling here.

The patterns were originally published in European magazines, which made them extremely hard to come by in the US market for a long time, until the spate of recent republications instigated by and/or available from Lacis in Berkeley, CA. Rare copies of the original Lyra once sold on ebay for $100's, but now the Lacis reprint is available for a mere $7. There is also the book called Knitted Lace Designs of Herbert Niebling, an English translation of Eva Maria Leszner's 1986 Gestrickte Spitzendecken. I have learned that the English title is a misnomer, in that many of the patterns are in fact *not* actual Nieblings. But positively verifying such attributions can be an impossible task, partly because the original published patterns often do not include the name of the designer for each piece, but also because there was in fact a Niebling "school" or design team that worked under his name and stylistic influence, like the ateliers of the Renaissance.

So there has been an explosion of Niebling work in the English-speaking world in recent years, with the formation of at least one Yahoo group and much activity on Ravelry, etc. It has become quite popular to knit doily patterns at a larger gauge so that they can be worn as shawls: Lacefreak's purple Lyra is a lovely example, marked as a Ravelry "favorite" by nearly 800 people to-date. I bought the Lyra pattern and the Leszner book last year, along with a cone of Gossamer Silk from Heirloom Knitting in stunning silver (see left), in hopes of starting a Niebling adventure of my own. And with a family wedding coming up in mid-July to serve as the excuse, I decided that the time had come to make it happen.

For the wedding gift I chose a rectangular design (shown on p. 87 of the Leszner book), consisting of two identical squares that are grafted together down one side before an elaborate border/edging is worked all the way around the outside. It may or may not be an authentic Niebling design, but it has enough complex elements to it so as not to be a dull knit, and I can interpret a fair bit of wedding imagery out of it as well. I decided to do a single practice square first, with no. 10 crochet cotton and 2.75 mm (US size 2) needles, to be sure that I understood the chart. I used up an entire ball (400 yards) of the crochet cotton just on the main chart!!

The original plan was to finish the cotton piece before even touching the silk, but then part way along I suddenly realized that the wedding was only 3 weeks away (yikes!!), and so I reluctantly laid the practice piece aside with its edging incomplete. And then there were (*sigh*) thirteen... Then again, a case could be made to consider the cotton and the silk together as a single project rather than two separate ones. And both are short-term investments rather that will not become permanent fixtures on the WIP list. I fully intend to finish the cotton one ASAP, both as a matter of principle but also because it will give me something to keep, since I am giving the silk version away. Here are a few pictures of the crochet cotton at different stages, starting with dpn's and moving to a circular needle.

Notice the little brown pelican stitch marker in that last picture? I originally commissioned four pelicans, two white and two brown, from Jillian at Wee Ones, as a tribute to my maiden name (Pelikan), but working on this piece and thinking about recent headlines I discovered that the emblem could also serve as a meditation focus or prayer bead for the Gulf Coast oil spill, which made the knitting that much more meaningful.

The silk version has taken up the preponderance of my knitting time this whole past week. In fact, I have done very little else, because I am eager to finish it in plenty of time without any last-minute panic or midnight marathons. Just last night I finished the first of the two squares, which means that I am right on schedule and ~30% done with the piece as a whole. I am working with 1.75 mm (US size 00) needles, which is a step up from the 1.5 mm (US size 000) that I used for the Princess Shawl and other CashSilk projects. I could have chosen the smaller size for this project too, but I wanted to ensure that the lace would really open up. The fabric will require some serious blocking, of course, but I think it is going to shape up nicely and will make a big impression as a wedding gift. Fingers crossed...

Here are some pictures of the silk square as a work-in-progress, with knitting notes below. I have been photographing it against both pale and dark backgrounds, because the varying contrasts show off the lace in different ways (color vs. pattern). As always, click on any of the images to take a closer look.

Casting on in a circle with the tiny, slippery silk thread was a veritable nightmare at first. But after trying several “clever” new methods of circular-cast-on with the gossamer yarn to no good effect, I finally adopted an old-school approach, especially because the silk was likely to break when attempting to adjust a slip-ring at the center. So I got out my 1.0 mm crochet hook, made a fixed ring of 6 tiny chain stitches, placed the live loop onto a dpn, pulled a new stitch through the chain loop with the crochet hook and transferred it to the dpn (= 2 stitches), wrapped the yarn around the dpn once (= 3 stitches), then created another stitch with the crochet hook through the chain loop (= 4 stitches), and so on, until I had 16 stitches, which was 1/2 the desired amount. I then knit one row plain (figuring that the gossamer yarn could handle an extra mm or two near the center), then a row of knitting into the front and back of every stitch to double the count, then two rows plain as per the pattern, before starting the chart with row 3. Worked like a charm, and felt like a huge accomplishment.

In rows 3-15 the pattern calls for a number of crossed stitches (really mini-cables) in adjacent pairs, and the one modification that I made to the chart as written was to angle these away from each other for symmetry, rather than crossing them all in the same direction. It was a bit of a nuisance, but my friendly crochet hook proved its usefulness yet again, by serving as the world’s most convenient cable needle. One more floppy stick was the last thing I wanted in the midst of 5 dpn’s on that tiny scale!! Fortunately, though, I got through those early rows relatively fast.

My 1.75 mm dpn's are fully 8" long, and so I had originally acquired only 24" and 32" circular needles in that size, which meant that I was not able to take the first square off the dpn's until after 31 rows (when it would finally fit on the 24" circular). The slippery silk made some serious ladders at the junctions between needles. I don’t know if these will eventually block out or not, or maybe part way, but since they are evenly placed on all four sides of the square I keep telling myself that they will not detract from the finished product in any case, provided that both conjoined squares match. So even though I ordered both a 16" circular needle in the 1.75 mm size, and even a 12" one as well, I will probably use the dpn’s for the first 31 rows of the second square as well and save my new shorter-circumference circs for future projects, of which there are bound to be many. ;-)

When the first square was finished, I transferred it to a crochet cotton lifeline so that I could see what the pattern looked like (and get pictures) and to facilitate the grafting process as well. The latter should not pose an insurmountable difficulty, since it thankfully involves only single stitches alternating with yo loops. And once it is done, I will place the remaining live stitches from both squares onto the 32” circular needle for the edging. I deliberately postponed the last row of plain knitting from the main chart, so that the graft can take the place of it down the center seam, and so that I can use it to establish the unified path all the way around the outside of the rectangle prior to starting the edging chart.

One little footnote: the only other knitting that I have managed to squeeze in around all this Niebling lace is the Evenstar, where I am happy (and relieved) to report that I now have 30 out of 56 edging points complete. It felt really good to pass the halfway point at last, and to empty the first container of beads as well. Progress... My goal is to wear the shawl to the same wedding where the Niebling will be a gift. So far, so good.

Pushing the Lace Envelope

Anyone who knows my knitting reasonably well or has read much of this blog has probably heard of my love affair with the 2/56 NM Gossamer CashSilk from Heirloom Knitting in the UK, which I have used for three of Sharon Miller's designs so far (the Wedding Ring Shawl, the Princess Shawl, and the Unst Stole). Well, I recently acquired two new fine-gauge yarns from the same source: 2/32 NM Gossamer Silk and 2/90 NM Gossamer Cashmere.

The Gossamer Silk comes wound on cones of 100g (= 3500 yards). It used to be available only in white or ivory, but they have recently added royal blue, coral pink, and silver to their inventory. I had been promising myself for a while to order a single cone after the start of the new year, probably in white, so that I could experiment with some of Herbert Niebling's lace designs, which have been on my growing "To Do list" ever since the first book of patterns arrived here over the summer, courtesy of Lacis. One look at the shimmery silver silk was enough to convince me that the time had arrived to make the much-anticipated purchase. So here it is. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger .

I don't know how long it will be before I actually embark upon my first Niebling project, but it feels good to have the yarn on hand, because now I can act immediately whenever the inspiration hits. My oh-so-talented knitting pal Anita (a.k.a. The Fiber Artist) ordered a similar cone for herself at the same time too, so maybe we will eventually do our own little Niebling KAL. At any rate, click on the thumbnail (upper left) o get a closer look at this gorgeous fiber, which has all the delicious sheen one would expect from 100% silk. In some ways it looks even more like actual mithril than the platinum CashSilk that I am using for my Unst Stole, despite what I said at the time when I first launched that project.

The Gossamer Cashmere, meanwhile, is a brand new addition to the Heirloom Knitting line, available only in a creamy soft white color (see right). On the web-site Sharon Miller bills it as "almost certainly the finest natural yarn available for lace knitters today," and I knew right away when I saw the write-up that I simply HAD to experience this stuff in person. *WOW*!!! It is truly a remarkable thing to encounter a knitting yarn so unbelievably fine-gauged and yet obviously so strong as well, with all the dreamy softness and bloom of 100% cashmere. The mind truly boggles...

I ordered only a single skein to start, on the assumption that I will have to spend a good bit of time with practice swatches before committing myself to a full-scale project. Besides, the neat little 25g skein contains a staggering 1230 yards!! That should be plenty to be getting on with, as the saying goes. I honestly don't know what to expect about needle sizes, since I already use 1.5 mm (US size 000) needles (i.e. the smallest Addi Turbos available) to work with the CashSilk, which is 2/56 NM, almost *twice* as thick as this new material. Just take a good look at this picture with the dime and click for a closer view: you might not believe your eyes. Clearly there are some FUN TIMES ahead as my lace-knitting adventure continues...

Royalty is a tough act to follow, but...

I think I may have mentioned it once already, but I am *addicted* to the CashSilk yarn. I feel as if I'm chain-smoking with this stuff, even though I've never held a lighted cigarette in my entire life. Here's what I mean: as the Princess Shawl was nearing completion, I made sure to order my next installment of CashSilk so that it would arrive in plenty of time before I finished, and I cast on for the new project literally less than 24 hours after the washing & blocking extravaganza described in my previous postings. I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact at least for now that I simply MUST have one CashSilk project on the needles at any given moment. No more than one at a time, certainly, but at least one, always. That's just how it is.

But where to next? I mean, how on earth do you follow up on something as splashy and ornate and over-the-top as the Princess?

Well, for one thing, LESS IS MORE. I was ready for a project on a smaller scale, where I could enjoy the forgotten pleasure of knitting with less than 200 stitches across and actually see progress on an hourly basis rather than having to wait days or even weeks for my effort to produce a measurable difference. I also wanted something that I could actually expect to wear. Occasions that would call for a lavish garment like the Princess shawl are few and far between in my world!!

So for a bunch of different reasons I chose the Unst Stole from Sharon Miller's book Heirloom Knitting (p. 261). It's just the right size for my purposes right now as a "Princess knitter in recovery," and I've always loved the design, especially the scrumptious border (also seen on this shawl pattern, which is the first in Sharon's collection and a very close cousin of the Unst stole).

Oh! And I almost forgot to add that a new colorway in the CashSilk was released just in time for this project. It's called Platinum, and as a sterling silver jewelry fanatic, I adore this alternative to the pearly white yarn traditionally used for fine lace. The moon-glow gossamer thread is like knitting with a strand of mithril. Fabulous.

Along the way, while laying the groundwork for this project and reading through the book, I started exploring the possibility of designing my own lace shawl(s) someday, based on the traditional motifs. To that end, Heirloom Knitting is a wonderfully *RICH* resource, containing not only an extensive individual pattern library (centers, borders, edgings, and grids) but also various tools and guidelines to help ease beginners into the complexities of designing whole elaborate pieces. Sharon addresses such topics such as the selection and layout of patterns and techniques for the construction of various shapes (e.g. borders-inward vs. borders-outward), as well as aesthetic issues like balance, symmetry and proportions & how to do the necessary calculations too.

These design discussions are specifically aimed at the novice and so remain very much on an introductory level. Indeed sometimes their tone almost verges on the coy or flirtatious. For they seek to spark curiosity and inspire creativity, rather than to instruct in any detail. But since I have never designed my own lace before (having only ever followed patterns written by other people), they were pitched right at my level and I have found them very evocative. There are certain pages that I find myself turning to again and again, and each time that I do so, my understanding and appreciation grows deeper toward those who do design their own lace patterns.

Lately I have been particularly taken up with the concept of "frames," i.e. narrow patterned bands that serve to highlight and embellish the transition from center to border on a shawl. These intriguing design elements can appear singly or be layered several deep in a concentric fashion. There is a photo of an antique shawl on p. 216 of HK that I just can't seem to get out of my mind for some reason.

So I decided to try my hand at tinkering with the Unst Stole pattern a little, to see what it felt like to take some control over the design of a piece of lace.

I drew some confidence from the fact that this is a rectangular stole, with the two border panels placed (from the knitter's perspective) on the top and bottom of the center panel. All three of these elements are worked straight back and forth with the same number of stitches across throughout. No increases or decreases to keep track of or picky mitred corners to work out. That made it easier for me to take my first few tentative baby (or perhaps toddler steps) in the design direction.

There are some big decisions left that I will have to make at some point down the road, but here is what I know so far about my modified version of the Unst stole:

1. I decided to keep the original count of 185 stitches across for the center & borders, despite the small gauge of the CashSilk. One or two posters on the HK Yahoo Group suggested that their shawls, following the pattern as written, came out less long-and-skinny (i.e. with rather more width and less height) than they had hoped, so I did not feel any call to widen mine.

2. The layout of the stole precludes a 4-sided frame, but I thought it would be fun to experiment with a narrow band at top and bottom of the center panel, separating it from the two border panels. Using the mirrored version of the fern motif (p. 90), which is a cousin to certain visual elements found in the existing pattern, I decided to place a row with the ferns facing one way on the bottom of the center and another with the ferns facing the opposite direction on the top. I followed Sharon's instructions to do the math for the pattern repeats, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the ferns would fit exactly when spaced only 3 stitches apart. I simply placed 6 rows of plain knitting and a break pattern row both above and below the fern motif. Nifty!!

3. Looking at various pictures of the Unst stole as knitted by Sharon Miller and others, I have always thought that the spider-hole lozenges appearing in the center pattern between alternating bands of spider webs look too square and boxy, allowing the webs to dominate the pattern rather more than I would like. So in order to achieve more of a balance, I decided to elongate them by incorporating 3 spider holes into each lozenge instead of 2.

4. Just for the fun of it, by way of introducing some additional complexity and visual interest, and with encouragement from Sharon Miller herself (offered via the HK Yahoo Group), I also decided to alternate bands of the traditional pattern known as the "Shetland Twins" (HK p. 139). After some charting & based on the arithmetic, I decided to make the lozenges for the Shetland Twins pattern contain 4 pattern repeats to balance the height of 3 spider holes. In fact, as it turns out, the Shetland Twins lozenges come out two rows taller than the spider-hole ones. Better that than 3 rows shorter, so there you are.

5. As of right now I am still not sure how many repeats of my extended pattern will be required to achieve the desired effect. It will be a choice between 9 total bands of lozenges (i.e. 5 of spider holes and 4 of the Shetland Twins) or 11 (one more of each type, i.e. 6 and 5, respectively). Depending on the ratio of width to height when the center is complete, I will most likely add to the borders as well, rather than keeping them the same size and letting the center account for any increase in the overal dimensions of the finished piece (as it did in my Princess shawl). If/when this happens, I will simply continue the existing diamond-shaped trellis grid and repeat three out of the four "filler" patterns in the reverse order: those patterns now go ABCD, but I would do them ABCDCBA.

6. Last but not least, while I am at it with all these other modifications, I will definitely choose my own edging as well. I have never much cared for the original one, with its chunky squares of plain knitting.

Well, that's all for now. Here are two pictures of my Unst Stole center as a WIP. The first one shows the bottom "frame" and the second is a closeup of the modified center pattern. As usual, just click on either image to see a larger view.

Things the Princess Shawl Taught Me

A week or so after blocking the Princess shawl and watching its stunning transformation into a finished object, I typed up a reflective piece and posted it on the Heirloom Knitting Yahoo Group. This sort of thing really ought to go in a blog, of course, but at the time I had not yet begun one. So now, having rectified that inadequacy, I would like to reproduce my thoughts here, ever so slightly edited and retouched for broader consumption.

I have often said that one of the things I love most about knitting is that it not only gives my “fidget energy” something productive to do, but also helps me think. The Princess shawl was a big enough project to offer *ample* opportunity along those lines. It taught me what I see as a number of important lessons too. I have been meaning for a while to write down some of my thoughts, partly to give others the benefit of them (such as it may be), and also in order to make them stop swirling around in my head. Some of the points I want to make are highly technical in nature, while others are more speculative and philosophical. Some I am expressing here for the first time, but others have been alluded to elsewhere and to my mind bear repeating.

At any rate, please take these pronouncements for what they are worth, and no more. They certainly reflect my current attitudes about lace knitting, but they may or may not apply to other people, or even to me later on, when I have more experience under my belt.

1. Changing the width of a border panel (i.e. the # of horizontal pattern repeats) on a shawl without also adjusting its depth (i.e. the # of vertical rows it contains) inevitably means that the center pattern must become proportionally a larger part of the finished shawl.

If you compare my Princess to the one pictured on the HK website, you will see how much more of mine is taken up by the center triangle. I knew this from the moment when I made the decision to add the two extra border feathers, and was continually reminded of it all along the way. The center took me *9 months* to complete, including most of the summer and the whole winter break, when I was not teaching and had lots of extra time to knit. That is a long time, and it felt like even more because each row was also steadily wider than the last. It was like the fable of Achilles and the tortoise: I knew I had to be making progress, but instead of getting closer and closer the target kept retreating into the distance.

2. Gauge is vital, because lace needs room to breathe – especially with an extremely fine yarn like the CashSilk.

When working a lace-hole pattern, such as on the Princess edging, one is often expected to knit and purl into a single yo. With the CashSilk, I always wrap the yarn around the needle twice when making the yo in those cases, so that there is enough give in the fabric to accommodate the knit-and-purl.

3. When picking up stitches along the inner side of a lace edging (or any other knitted edge), pull the yarn through only a single strand between ridges.

This seems entirely self-evident to me now, and if you read Sharon’s instructions in the HK book closely, you’ll see that she spells it out in no uncertain terms. But back when I finished the initial edging strip for the Princess and turned to pick up the stitches for the border, I unthinkingly reverted to a technique appropriate to heavy wool sweaters rather than lace, and pulled each stitch through two loops instead of one. Relying on only one gossamer strand would have made me feel insecure! So I ended up with a visibly chunky band at the transition from edging to border, which tended to pull the fabric together horizontally along the seam. By the time I noticed this, however, I was already well into the ornate border pattern and could not bring myself to go back and fix it.

Fortunately, this particular sob-story has a happy ending, since the process of blocking the shawl did a great deal to mitigate the effect along the lower edge. Those edging points stand out perfectly well now with no visible bunching. And of course on the upper portions I had learned my lesson and was able to follow the proper single-strand technique. So if I had it to do all over again, I would adopt a different technique, but it did not turn out to be a fatal mistake.

4. Embrace the wisdom of taking things in stride. Accidents happen, and people make mistakes. But every mishap is a learning opportunity when seen correctly. Never be afraid to take a few steps backward now and then along the path. It’s all part of the journey. But – and this is the crucial thing – learn to fine-tune your responses to the nature of the difficulty.

(a) Experience has taught me unimagined skills at on-the-spot repairs. The trick is to remain calm and yet react quickly, in order to minimize the damage. When I first started making lace, dropped stitches almost always sent me straight into the “frog pond” (as the saying goes), but by now I have learned to catch most of them right away and prevent them from cascading.

(b) Taking lace off the needles should be the very last resort. I would never do it unless I had a lifeline in place and literally no other choice, because picking up all those little loops in the violated fabric is a sure way to madness. Tinking can become as much of a finely honed skill as knitting, and can teach you a great deal about how patterns are constructed. Un-making is a natural part of the creative process. I have placidly tinked as many as 14 or 16 rows of >1,000 stitches each. Over the span of months or even years that it takes to complete one of these huge lace projects, a few days of retrograde motion here or there really doesn’t amount to very much, and there is immense satisfaction in wiping away all the traces of a mishap and seeing them replaced with the pristine pattern. It means that God is in His heaven and all is right with the world.

(c) But sometimes the damage is just too great. When all else fails – as it inevitably will on occasion – it is the better part of valor to go back to the drawing board and start over again from scratch. Even this dreaded eventuality should be welcomed as a second chance, like having a whole new and unexpected lease on life.

(d) Know your own limits and learn to take things in stride as they come. When the world goes unexpectedly sideways or a project "turns pear-shaped" on you, despite all your best efforts and intentions, quite often the best thing to do is take a deep breath and move on. Sharon Miller has often commented on the remarkable willingness displayed by the antique Shetland lace knitters to make adjustments to their patterns on the fly, e.g. by inserting extra decreases or increases here or there.

There was a time when I would probably have balked at this idea as an excuse for shoddy workmanship, but it is all a matter of proportion. For instance, the Laurel Leaf pattern at the top of the Princess border is supposed to reduce the number of stitches on the needle by exactly 25%. I had carefully done the math so that I knew precisely how many stitches to expect. Yet although there was no visible flaw in the pattern, the number of stitches that I actually got was slightly off (776 instead of 765). The Laurel Leaf is a tricky affair. It would have been a major headache to try and undo it. So I left it in place exactly as is, and simply recalculated the stitch-count for the center triangle. No harm done. Perfectionism can be over-rated, and life is short.

5. Let’s face it: lace-knitting is a specialized hobby. But community makes ALL the difference.

Some of my happiest hours alone have been spent knitting, but it is historically and fundamentally a social activity. Think of all those old photos of women in groups, doing their needlework together. We learn from each other and draw strength, encouragement, and inspiration from sharing the journey.

I could probably have completed the Princess shawl in splendid isolation, relying on nothing but Sharon’s instructions and my own ingenuity, but the process would have taken much longer, turned out far worse, and not have meant anywhere near as much as it did with the support and encouragement of this group behind me. Most of the people I live and work with – even the knitters among them – tend to regard my lace-knitting as an eccentricity to be greeted with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Even if they don’t express their feelings aloud, you can see them thinking, “Who would want to do a thing like that?”

That's why I value the Internet community so much. The people I have gotten to know via the HK Yahoo Group, and more recently on Ravelry, not to mention out here in the blogosphere, have made all the difference in the world. How magnificent and precious and reassuring it is to find fellow enthusiasts, who understand what this whole craft is all about and who have so much wisdom and understanding among them.

I’ll never forget how one such person came heroically to the rescue when I was struggling with calculations for the bottom edging of the Princess. I had gone off in quite the wrong direction altogether with various wild and confused ideas swirling around in my head, but she calmly ran the numbers and came up with a simple scheme that made perfect sense and yielded terrific results.

That’s what friends are for.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all — and that goes out to my new blog readers as well as all the old Yahoo Group acquaintances. I feel as if my own adventures in lace-knitting have only just begun. Ever onward!! As the poet Horace said: “life is short, but art is LONG.”

Princess Gallery

The Princess shawl is such a complex and intricate design that I simply can't resist posting some more photographs to showcase a few of its most striking details. Click on any image to see a larger view. Enjoy!

Mmmm. GOSSAMER.

Metamorphosis (a.k.a. Blocking the Princess, Part II)

Metamorphosis is a Greek word literally meaning "change of shape" or "transformation" (which is simply the Latin derivative for the identical concept).

Believe it or not, my Princess shawl is still evolving.

Every other piece of lace that I have ever tried to block was square: pull the edges out straight, watch the corners, and that's it. You're good as gold. The irregular shape of this object made for a very different proposition. I had my handy diagram, of course, but all the same, I couldn't be sure from the outset that I really knew what to expect. There were too many variables. I had to let the fabric tell me how *it* wanted to look.

I began by carefully running the blocking wires through all the edging points (179 of them), one by one, and only once I had all the wires in place did I deploy any pins or apply any real tension. It soon became clear that the bottom curve was going to be the trickiest part of the whole business, because of the way that the border, which started life as a rectangle, needs to negotiate its way around the pivot-point of the center triangle. So I started there and worked my way first out to either side and then up, saving the top edge for last.

In the end, a gentle curve naturally formed across the top, so I went with the flow. The curve actually runs all the way down the center triangle, with the parallel rows of the pattern marking a lovely arc, rather than a straight horizontal line. Here is a nice photo (click on the image to see a larger version that will display the curve to better advantage).

Although the effect may be slightly exaggerated in this next photo because of the angle at which it was taken, the bottom feather became undeniably somewhat foreshortened (i.e. stretched out more wide than tall) due to the complex tensions being placed on the areas surrounding it.

In a message addressed to me on the Heirloom Knitting Yahoo Group the day after I had posted a series of photos of my FO, Sharon Miller herself had this to say:

I think next time you block this you could try the effect of making the bottom less curved and then the bottom feathers would 'bloom' more - I'd have used straight rods for all but the bottom few points (say 12? along the bottom tip) of these two sides which I'd have fetched the glass-headed pins to do.

The NEXT TIME???

At that point I was still getting over the *first* time. But now, a month or so later, I'm beginning to think that Sharon was right, and that maybe I might be almost ready to give it another go in the not too distant future.

Live and learn, grow and evolve...

Size Matters (a.k.a. Blocking the Princess, Part I)

I blocked my Princess shawl on a Sunday afternoon early in May, within hours of finishing the graft (see previous post). The process ended up striking me as uproariously funny, more or less by accident. I tend to find this particular species of unintentional comedy lurking EVERYWHERE around me. If you really want to hear God laugh, as the saying goes, tell him *your* plans...

Let me say first that it felt STRANGE to have reached this point, after nearly a year and a half of uninterrupted knitting, including *9 months* spent on the center triangle alone (which, being worked from the bottom point upwards, got wider and wider as it went, exaggerating the effect of slow-motion). It came as a bit of a shock to the system to find myself suddenly holding a great limp wad of cashmere/silk fabric that was no longer, in any real sense, a knitting project. No more dainty skein of yarn attached to it anywhere, no more "live stitches" to watch out for along any of its edges, no more complex pattern to follow, no more needles to hold in either hand. I almost didn't know what to do.

But I said almost. Of course the first step was to wash the thing gently. Even with the most careful handling and attentiveness, a LOT of dirt and grime can build up in a knitted fabric over time just from the oils naturally occuring in the skin. Check out this post from fellow lace enthusiast, with a photo of the bucket full of dirty water that came off a perfectly magnificent white shawl. Yuck!! Naturally enough, most of what came off my Princess was loose dye from the dark red yarn, but there was definitely some unpleasant brown ick in there along with the native burgundy. After letting it soak in the suds for a while, I rinsed it many times to take care of all the soap and any leaking pigment, and did not stop rinsing and re-rinsing until the new water stayed clean and clear. Then I drained the sink and pressed down on the shawl to squeeze out the excess moisture (being careful to avoid any lifting or twisting that might damage the fabric), rolled the damp, shapeless mass in a towel, and brought it to the bedroom. I intended to use the queen-sized mattress as a convenient platform for the blocking, because I like the way that the pins fasten into its firm yet pliable surface.

But when I unfolded the shawl began to stretch it out flat, I discovered — to my *astonishment* — that it was WAY too big to fit on the top of the mattress. Calling my husband in from the next room, I said: "Um, I think we have a problem here."

We both stared in consternation at the curiously unfamiliar object sprawled across the bed. It would seriously have sagged over the edges in at least two separate directions if I hadn't caught it and bunched it up in the middle again.

OK, time for Plan B.

Right, Plan B. Hmm...

What's Plan B??

I didn't have a Plan B.

It had never even *occurred* to me to formulate a Plan B.

Back to the drawing board, then.

So I took the shawl back into the bathroom and let it soak in cold water while I made alternate arrangements.

After casting about for suitable flat surfaces in size XXL, I decided that the living room floor would be my best available option. So I herded our six (yes, *6*) cats into the bedroom, cleared the living room and vacuumed the carpet, and then spread out a queen-sized comforter for padding, and started the blocking process all over again.

Even that wasn't quite good enough: in the end, I had to lay down a second comforter next to the first to accommodate one outer corner that needed some additional space.

Let me be clear: this piece of lace is *HUGE*. Mind-bogglingly so, as the late-lamented Douglas Adams would have said. And there is irony here of the deepest and juiciest sort, because I had added two extra border feathers to Sharon Miller's original pattern in order to prevent the finished piece from turning out too small. No, I'm not kidding.

Now, in my own defense, my previous Heirloom Knitting project, the Wedding Ring Shawl — done in the same tiny yarn with the same tiny needles — had turned out to be decidedly on the diminutive side, and I had not wanted the same thing to happen with the Princess.

Be careful what you wish for!!

Not that I was even remotely displeased with the results. Delighted, entranced, amazed, blown over — take your pick. But what made the whole experience that afternoon so overwhelming and surprising and comical is the extent to which I never saw it coming.

Even after watching the silly thing grow, indeed after holding it *in my lap* every day for almost a year and a half, I honestly had no idea just how big it really was.

No idea.

NO EARTHLY *IDEA*.

In its finished form, my Princess shawl measures 104 inches (8 ft. 8 inches) across at its widest point, and 68 inches (5 ft. 8 inches) from top to bottom.

I had a dickens of a time taking decent pictures of the entire thing, even with the wide-angle feature on our little digicam. But by bringing in a step-ladder from the garage and literally holding the camera ON THE CEILING of our living room, I managed to capture this aerial shot. Click on the image for a larger view, as usual. This one will be worth it.

I also got this photo, of which I am particularly fond, by standing in the doorway to the room and viewing the shawl edge-on. Again, click on the image for a full-scale view. What makes this such a "money shot" to my mind is the way that it seems to capture the full scope of the project.

I should add as a footnote (an academic can't resist) that once I got over the initial shock of watching my lace expand from a shapeless blob the size of small briefcase into a great wide expanse of gossamer fabric that took up most of the largest room in our house, I was not disappointed. And it's really not too big for me either: I am only a very average 5' 4" in height, but I can easily wear it without having it drag on the ground. :-)

Oh dear. I haven't talked about its shape yet, as promised in the previous post. Sigh. Ah well, that topic will just have to wait for my next installment.