I know I’ve mentioned it before – my knit fantasy. It’s not to design sweaters. It’s not to knit a car. It’s not even to write a book. My knit fantasy is to be a fabulous Lace Designer. A new Evelyn Clark, so to speak. Well, I can kind of live the fantasy now!
About a month ago, Jessica, of Rose-Kim Knits, featured a shawl she had knit using Evelyn Clark’s new book Knitting Lace Triangles. I HAD to have the book! I waited and waited, and finally last week I got my copy. (From the Knitty Noddy. Very nice service.)
I had it a few days before I figured out what I was doing – my fault not Evelyn’s – and while it’s a great book, it’s not REALLY about designing your own shawl. Although, I guess, if you had more patience than me you could use it a starting point.
What the book is, though, is a mix and match kind of a thing. Choose your own adventure if you will. Clark gives you four lace patterns (each with 10 stitch repeats, 3 with 10 row repeats, one with 20) and the knowledge to put these four lace patterns together in any kind of combination you’d like. There’s an 18 row beginning for each pattern, and various transitions to get you from one pattern to the next smoothly. You can also opt NOT to use the transitions.
The book is spiral bound so you can open it flat and there are charts for all of the lace patterns, as well as the beginnings, edging and transitions. She suggests that you photocopy then cut and paste your charts together, but I found it easier to just copy the chart into Excel and print it out from there. The patterns aren’t complicated at all so you don’t need a lot of symbols. Using the draw tool in excel gets you K2TOG, SSK and SK2P no problem.
After a few false starts, I’m on my way:
I started with the Ripple beginning then one repeat of Ripple, and now I’m alternating between Medallion and Leaf Lace. I plan on alternating between these two until I like how big it is (I’ve got a lot of yarn and I believe that bigger is indeed better) then I’ll go back to Ripple for a couple of repeats until the edging. I’m actually pretty much copying one of the ready made patterns she’s got in the book – with at least one tweak. Turns out I’m not that original. The yarn is Twinkletoes sock yarn, which I bought off of Ebay a long time ago. I’ll have to see what I can find about it for my next post on this shawl. (ETA: Margene sent me a link to Twinkletoes sock yarn. Now I just have to figure out what color this is….)
I’m enjoying the yarn and the pattern and I think my chosen adventure will be great!
Tomorrow – lots of SPIN OUT Prizes! The mail brought a lot of goodies today and I’m going to try to take pictures and write up the big post for tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who donated over the weekend! We’re over $2000 now! THANK YOU!
