Thanks, @rkennell, I appreciate it!
I’m working on the last chapter and have literally just finished it, I think. But I need to let it empty out of my brain before I do one last read-through to try to find those last few errors. Don’t ever try to write a book for both traditional AND mirror-image knitters at the same time. Unless, of course, you DON’T value your sanity! :zany_eyes:
Did you know that Hayley Tsang Sather has adapted several of Niebling’s patterns into shawls? And they can be bought directly from her at enVision Knit. 
I bought her Simply Peony (enVision Simply Peony – Pfingstrose (Abridged) Shawl) directly from her, though it keeps getting pushed down in my (mental) queue. :rolleyes:
I have never seen Hayley Tsang Sather patterns and will check that out! Also wanted to say that I’ve bookmarked your blog for all the lace info (I love knitting lace) as well as following your CotLin posts. I have some of that yarn and it’s been interesting to see how it works for your sweaters!
@Camillelace73, I’ve already worn the first sweater twice, so it’s waiting for its second laundering cycle, then I’ll measure it again to see if the fabric has stabilized gauge-wise.
And, though the post in question hasn’t been published just yet, I am indeed swatching the top of sweater #2, with four rounds to go until the second (and final) shaping round. I’ll add pics to that post and other posts as appropriate, and I may write a couple more based on various things I was reminded of while working the short rows. So many things to keep in mind!!!
@ilexedits, I can’t imagine! I can do a bit of basic mirror knitting; I learned the value of it when I took an Entrelac class–a real time saver for that and for short rows, like in the circular baby blanket I’m knitting, but to do it in LACE??? That has to be a bit crazy, and to WRITE a book for those zany people, well, let’s just say, you’re one gutsy person and my hat is off to you!
As a lace beginner, I am finding the following to be helpful:
When I first started lace knitting, I found I made mistakes and often would need to tink and/or start over. When I had the opportunity, I took a class at Vogue Knitting Live with Brooke Nico about fixing mistakes in lace and it has been smooth sailing ever since. Although I learned how to fix a mistake without ripping back entire rows, her first rule about mistakes in lace knitting has never left my mind… don’t make them. With her tips, I have no fear of lace knitting and love the mental challenge. Use stitch markers to indicate each repeat because counting to 12 or 16 is way easier than counting to 120. When your return row is to purl back, follow your chart in reverse so you can fix a problem immediately. Something else to consider for those who knit loosely, when there is a YO on the right side row, skip it and just pull up the yarn and add it in when purling back. This is also a plan for areas with double yarn overs and you don’t want the hole to be too large, I’ll often make a single YO on the right side row and throw in the missed stitch on the return trip. Hope this helps!
UNCLE! Why that word means I SURRENDER I do not know, but I have met my match in lace knitting. After about 20 false starts and hours of fiddling, I had to decide whether to go for the 21st time or to let it go…and, for now, I am letting it go. Absolutely beautiful shawl, but the knitting is too complicated for my enjoyment. It is what others are referring to as “hard lace” with patterns that run on both RS and WS rows. That plus different stitches almost every other stitch, many which were new stitches to me, plus cables…OYE VAY! Just too complicated for my remaining brain cells in this senior’s head :rolleyes: What began as a challenge became an exasperation and I fussed with it far longer than I probably should have.
Soooo short of throwing the project out my back door (needles, yarn, yarn bowl, chart, magnet board, colored markers, stitch markers AND the blankety blank pattern), I decided that before I lose my love of knitting, it would be the sane thing to put…that…knitting…DOWN… pour myself a VERY LARGE glass of wine…and move on. Not only did I have to admit defeat, I had to let go of the vision of my cousin opening her Christmas gift and being delighted with THAT shawl. So it isn’t just the knitting that is hard to release, but it is that mental image filled with emotion that has to change too.
A new day has dawned and miraculously I want to knit ( just not THAT) and so have pulled out a pattern for a shawl I did about a year ago and repurposed the lovely yarn I had purchased for THAT shawl and am humming along happily. The frustration of getting myself into a bit of a knitting knot is a distant memory. The yarn slips through my fingers, the beautiful beads slip on, and the lovely pattern emerges as my needles click along. I find myself smiling at the thought of my cousin opening her Christmas gift and wrapping THIS shawl around her shoulders. I can’t wait!
@lcnrainbow Good for you! There’s no sense in knitting something that you aren’t enjoying working on. I don’t often give up on projects, but sometimes it’s throw in the towel or drive yourself mad! Once I bought a pattern for an absolutely stunning lace shawl. Sadly it wasn’t tagged very well and it turned out to be bottom up, casting on hundreds of stitches and decreasing to the top. Not my favorite, but OK. The lace was patterned on both sides and also had cables. That was OK too. Then I got to the charts. The designer uses the symbols reversed! So a left slant for k2tog and a right slant for ssk plus a few other symbol substitutions. While there isn’t a standard set of symbols, it was super confusing to my brain to try to substitute in symbols that were the same, but opposite. I’d start each row off OK, but then I’d get a rhythm and be following the chart as I normally would. I’m sure I could have gotten used to the reversals if the shawl had been top-down starting with just a few stitches. In that case it’s not a big deal to tink back until the pattern is memorized. However, tinking several hundred stitches at a time…no.
Knitterlady13, right on! I guess we have all met our match at some point when it comes to knitting. I probably push a little too long for my own good, just REALLY WANT to master the challenge. Each new start on this particular pattern, thinking, ok, I will get it this time. My guess is that we have lots of company!
I love all your tips! I would add getting a magnet board. They come with flat magnet strips that you place on the chart just above the chart line where you are working. You keep moving the magnet up as you progress. They come portable, but those are not big enough for me…I found a legal sized one at a craft store. Using the magnet board keeps my place and also makes it easy for my eyes to return to the chart as I knit along. I make my notes in the available while space on the charts. For example, if I am to repeat a chart x number of times, I will write that number near the chart along with total stitch count. Since my board is wide, I will put the stitch key on one side and the current chart on the other.
YES! It took me some time to read my knitting, and I am still learning. How stitches line up with the previous row is helpful for me, as well as being able to do a side-by-side comparison of two pattern repeats when “something isn’t right”. I have also found beading to be really helpful and it is easier for me to find where I have made a mistake by looking at how the beading is lining up.
That’s a great point. When I’m fixing errors in lace I always compare the area I’m working on with the next repeat over. It really helps to rebuild lace sections.
lcnrainbow, that is a fantastic idea.
While there’s something to be said for the determination to push through to the end, it truly is wisdom to know when that end doesn’t meet your goals. Whether it’s switching knitting projects or re-working a fitness program, I think it often takes as much courage to stop something that isn’t working as it does to start something that might.
Why I like lifelines…by lcnrainbow (Laura)…I was binding off a lovely beaded shawl I made as a birthday gift for my BFF’s 60th… So happy to be done! I had about 10 stitche’s left to bind off, and of course the other zillion were bound and off the needles. I stretched the shawl out a bit as I brought the final stitches to the needle points when I saw a bead drop somewhere from the far end. I opened up the shawl to discover I must have dropped a stitch while binding off, and not only had the stitch dropped, but I now had a huge gaping hole where about 15 rows of knitting had unravelled, and beads flew everywhere…It took me a week to catch every free stitch and tink back to where my knitting was intact, get them all back on the needles, and reknit all those rows…I didn’t know how to use pins and a board to fix just the area that had unraveled, so tinking was my only skill. Life lessons abound in such a situation, but perhaps my most important is that it is now my common practice to do a lifeline every so many rows, and most certainly on the very last one before binding off.
Perfectly said about following your chart backwards. I try to count as I go on the RS but that can be a bit mind-numbing and since I am easily distracted (SQUIRREL!) I can think I have counted every repeat, but I often catch a mistake on the wrong side by reading my chart backwards. My most common mistakes are YO at the end of a pattern repeat…easy to fix from the WS.
Good for you! Knitting should be enjoyable and I have no doubt your cousin will love THIS shawl.
@lcnrainbow Ouch, poor you, I do sympathise. With me, it was a lace stole that had taken me weeks, I had taken my time, I had almost finished, then I realised something was wrong a couple of rows back - there was a hole that was not part of the lace. I had been using a lifeline, but I had removed it and not replaced it yet. I have been knitting for more years than I can count, but I am not all that experienced in lace work, so of course I spread the work out to see what the problem was - rookie mistake! The stitches at the bottom of the hole merrily undid themselves and danced happily downwards, making the hole bigger and undoing stitches that had been knitted together, so I had no idea what was a loop of the lacework and what was part of a k2tog, etc. I inserted an afterthought lifeline below the hole and ripped back to it, but I must have missed a stitch when I was inserting it, because suddenly there was another hole, in a different place. I gave up at that point - there is something quite “cleansing to the soul” about ripping out a huge piece of work that was obviously not meant to be!
That is the best way. If you are not enjoying it, just stop and do something else. I’ll bet your cousin loves the NEW shawl 