Lace Weight – trials and tribulations

I decided to tackle a new challenge over Christmas and I cast on the Anisoptera shawl by Petitchoufleur that I picked up at Yarndale, my first lace weight project.

I have discovered that although I do love knitting, I do not love all aspects of knitting. I do not like knitting in lace weight yarn – at all!! As I have been battling with this lace shawl, I have been contemplating why I do not like it and I have decided it’s just too delicate, too fine and too fiddly. I like my knitting more robust. I like to be able to see the structure and I’m so used to being able to read my knitting, which I have massively struggled with in lace. I enjoy discovering designers clever uses of different increases and decreased to great effect however I found myself wondering why I was bothering with a ssk, instead of a k2tog tbl when it really doesn’t look significantly different enough in such a loose knit. I also discovered a hatred for p2tog tbl (what a hideously awkward stitch – particularly in lace weight), each time I had to do these I felt myself getting more and more frustrated, when the main reason I knit, it to relax and produce something lovely.

Not the best photo & it’s a bit crumpled – to be fair not my best knitting either!

My issues are no reflection on the pattern, which is really pretty with cleverly layered lace sections, it’s just not for me!

Having already committed to doing about a quarter of the shawl and having found it frustrating to follow the pattern, I know I went wrong somewhere; my row count didn’t match up at the end of the rows and I found myself saying “Duck it!” a lot (disclaimer: that might not have been the actual word used)! I wasn’t vaguely interested in figuring out what happened, where and how to fix it, very unlike me, in any other project I’ve have figured out what the problem was and sorted it even ripping back whole sections & garments to ensure they’re right. So having got to a convenient point to change tack (after the first lace chart), I decided from here I’m just going to wing it. Knit until it’s big enough or I have run out of yarn so I at least have a finished shawl/scarf to wear.

I wrote this post a little while ago (over the Christmas period), mainly to off load my frustrations – it worked I felt much better once I’d written about it, that and screwing up the pattern (I’m slightly ashamed about that – but it felt bloody brilliant at the time and a great stress reliever – we’ve all been there, right?) It was my intention to continue on with this project, I will someday – currently a bit fed up of it, so it has joined the few other WIP’s I have for now. It did however spur me on to pick my Blaithin cardigan back up (been in Aran weight yarn and much more my cup of tea). Good progress has been made and hopefully I’ll be sharing the finished garment with you soon.

Thanks for reading!