Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Forays into Lace Knitting

As if adding hats and mittens to my repertoire of knitting wasn't exciting enough, I am now also knitting lace.

The jury is still out on if I really enjoy it or not.

The first lace scarf wasn't too bad since it was made from a 50/50 merino-silk that I dyed and spun myself. It came out at about 16 wraps per inch so it wasn't terribly fine. I used Falling Water Lace Scarf pattern. It is very pretty and very soft and I love wearing it. I hate blocking it, however. Unfortunately, learning lace also meant having to learn to block.

After success with the first lace go-round I decided that I would take on some of the buffalo fibre that I have been hoarding for the last 17 months. I dug out the Buffalo Gold Lux, which is 45% Bison, 20% Cashmere, 20% Silk, 15% Tencel, wiped off the drool marks and got to work on Falling Birch Leaves.
This one is much slower going as it is a two-ply true lace weight. The worst part is that when I make a mistake I am finding it almost impossible to fix it without having to unknit back to the point that I went wrong and then re-knit again.

And in totally unrelated knitting news... yesterday it was Christopher's turn to get his blue belt in kempo. He did awesome in his kumite (10 minutes of free sparring with alternating opponents every minute - a LOT harder than it sounds). For both Katie and Christopher it has sunk in that they are only two belts away from their junior black belt.

1 comment:

Amy said...

Oooh pretty - I'm rubbish at lace, I must try harder :( Congrats to your littlun getting a blue belt, that's amazing!