3 posts tagged “victorian lace today”

This is my most successful lace project to date (almost).  As soon as I bought Victorian Lace Today my eye instantly fell on this pattern.  It has a very fun stitch - the melon stitch which was really fast and it was also my first time knitting on a border which turned out to be something incredibly enjoyable.

I chose 2 skeins of The Knittery - Merino Cashmere yarn (bought when I visited Socktopus) for this project in Passionfruit.  A sort of muted purple colour which was very attractive.  The yarn was incredibly soft and squishy and a little thicker than my usual sockweight.  The Knittery yarns are produced by a very talented dyer in Australia who has very sadly stopped dyeing due to moving to the States and it is not clear it she will resume.  Still this was very beautiful yarn and the melon stitch shawl would show it off to perfect.  You may be wondering what went wrong after all this eulogising.

Well the yarn and pattern were perfect, it was fun to knit and knitting on borders became one of my favourite things.  However I carefully calculated my yardage according to gauge and had quite a lot left over to comfortably finish. Except I discovered that Victorian Lace Today is renowned for underestimating yardage requirements! (a bit of a cardinal sin for a knitting book) and this pattern was no exception.  Herein started my problem…the yarn was amazing and understandably this colour had sold out at Socktopus.  Socktopus were the only UK stockists (Alice was really helpful and very sympathetic over the phone but not a miracle worker sadly).  The Dyer was not selling it on her website anymore because she has stopped dyeing.  So I turned to Ravelry and started to post on the boards begging for leftovers.  Eventually one kinds person in Australia said that they would sell me their skein and I jumped at the chance.  The yarn cost a great deal more to obtain then I would normally have paid and the dye lot was not a match but it was worth it to finish the shawl (I just couldn't bear to have frogged all my elegant hard work) and the dye lot change whilst obvious isn't in an obvious place on the shawl when worn.  It isn't exactly how I imagined it but I am pretty pleased with it all things considered.  I mean I might never have found even vaguely matching yarn which would have been a disaster.

Anyway it is blocked and put away to wear when the wear gets really really cold.

Melon Stitch Shawl

This left me with a huge cake of leftover passionfruit yarn and this yarn really is too good to have as just socks.  The subtle colours deserve to be shown off and the texture is so soft it really need to be around the neck.  My sister commented on how much she liked the Melon stitch shawl and so I decided to use the leftovers to make her a Christmas present (no way I could have parted with the shawl at that point!).  I designed a simple cowl to get the most out of the yardage and while once again I ended up knitting on fumes and finishing it off with 6 stitches of similar but slightly different yarn I think it looks great.

I cast on x stitches in the round and knitted the following pattern with a 4.5mm needle.

Row 1 purl
Row 2 knit
Row 3 purl
Row 4 knit
Row 5 purl
Row 6 - 20 knit 3 purl 1 (rpt)

Then I repeated the sequence until I was happy it was long enough.  Then I just purled and knitted alternate rows until I ran out of yarn .

Photo 27.jpg

Very simple but I think it looks really elegant and it is buttery soft and very warm.

This evening J and I are leaving for a week in the Lake District and so I have been carefully choosing the contents of my knitting bag.  I have taken most of my Manos Wool Classica in Olive for knitting a vest, some Socks that Rock Mediumweight sockyarn in Kaw Kaw and a skein of laceweight merino, silk and alpaca blend in a berry colour.  So a real range of yarn types and weights to keep me going.

Obviously I am taking all my needles and other notions since you never know what you might need!

The plan is that it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to finish the two pairs of socks I have on the needles since I am on the second sock in both cases, they are fast knits (historically) and I should get them both finished early in the week.  After all we have several hours of car travelling and at least one sock should get finished in that time.

So I am really looking to start one maybe two projects up in the Lakes.  

There is the Hilja Vest which I really want to be wearing right now at work with a nice white shirt. It has lots of stockinette knitting which should be fast and satisfying.  I think I have been putting it off because I might have to do some conversions with gauge and measuring myself but actually a quiet week away with lots of time to work out the maths is probably perfect.

Next there is the Socks that Rock – I love this colour and I love the base yarn.  I have been looking at completed photos of STR projects on Ravelry for weeks whilst resisting the urge to cast on.  I am taking two different patterns with me that I might use – first the Gullywash socks and secondly the Nutkin socks.  I am considering making a pair for my Mum I think she would love the colour as well and she has already dropped a few hints that in the cold weather my socks are the only things that keep her feet warm. Of the two patterns Nutkin would probably show of the yarn better and isn’t toe up like the other one (I tend to prefer cuff down and yet more than 50% of the socks I have knit so far this year have been toe up!), both of them have a short row heel but this might not bother the recipient as it does me and I do have the technique of creating hole-less wraps pretty much down and perfect now.

Lastly I am taking Victorian Lace today.  Whilst the Melon Stitch Shawl is on hiatus (awaiting the arrival of replacement yarn from Oz) I am not sure I am minded to start another lace shawl project.  However I have two in mind to make for gifts this year and I might discover an urge to get started.  The advantage of starting the gifts now is that a relaxing holiday is a great time to get stuck into the rhythm of a complicated lace project.  Only I will have to be extra careful about the yarn quantities here as I do not want to get stuck again like I did with the Melon Stitch Shawl – running out of yarn mere meters before the finish line.

Sunday a Triskellian and Kauket came over for a knit in day.  For me the point of this (apart from socialising with people I love) was to a) discuss knitting with people who knit b) get motivated to sort out UFOs and other annoying jobs that I have been putting off.

As I have already mentioned I first took the opportunity to complete Durrow and I really don’t think I would’ve had the motivation to sort this out without the Knit In day.  I also frogged the Mystic Star Shawl.  I was very demotivated, was finding the almost black cobweb weight yarn very difficult to deal with and whilst I liked the pattern, I have recently bought Victorian Lace Today which has some other patterns I much prefer that I wanted to use the yarn on instead.  I may come back to the Star Shawl one day (just with a thicker, lighter yarn) we will see.

I also managed to sew up one side and one ribbon (out of four) onto the baby kimono.  Sewing this up has not been a lot of fun, I put it off for ages and once I had finished sewing one side I totally lost motivation to sew up another side.  I am not entirely sure why, after all I am happy to sew in general. In fact I was so disheartened with the sewing I cast on another project (I decided that frogging one and finishing another meant that another slot had come up).  

I have been wanting another big scarf for a long time.  I wear my Clapotis almost everyday, it is a perfect size, with just the right amount of warmth and drape.  I don’t want to knit a third Clapotis though (I think I may die of boredom) and so I have been searching for an alternative.  It had to be lacy since this is where the right amount of drape will be generated and yet light enough to wear in spring or wound round my neck 2-3 times in winter so I was going for a sock yarn weight.  Well at Socktopus last weekend I bought 2 skeins of The Knittery Merino Cashmere Sock in Passionfruit (Purples and Grays) deliberately for such a project and I would be lying if I didn’t have a pattern in mind.  In my new favourite book (Victorian Lace Today) the first pattern which jumped out at me was… the melon stitch shawl.  I wound up one ball on Sunday and cast on knitting the first 6 repeats whilst we watched Daywatch (Sequel to the Russian Film Nightwatch and very good indeed).

Here is the in Progress Pic which I am loving.  

Melon Stitch Shawl in progress

The pattern is simple enough to do during TV watching (even during a subtitled film) but the melon stitch itself (once every 6 rows) is interesting enough that it doesn’t get boring.  When I have finished 62 repeats of the main pattern (I am on number 10 right now) I can cast off and try my first ever knitted on lace border which is very exciting indeed.  

I also took the opportunity of visitors to have a nice 2 course meal (by candle light since we were celebrating Earth Hour) and made the following

Roast Chicken with chives (from our garden), tarragon and parsley – all worked into butter which was stuffed just under the skin to self baste the chicken.

Lentils cooked in red wine and stock.

Vine Ripened Tomatoes roasted with basil … all from Rick Stein

Then to finish I had made a cake (which we had already eaten some of earlier in the day) from a recipe I found on the Guardian Website months ago.  This was a fair trade chocolate, chilli and orange cake.  It sounds weird but the amount of chilli is very small and just gives it a nice kick – I finished it off with Crème Fraiche which was a total inspiration as it was not to sweet and cut through the very dark rich chocolate cake.  I cooked the cake entirely from my baking stash so in a way it was completely free since I didn’t have to buy anything even the crème fraiche was left over from another meal.

I really hope we can arrange another one – although it may be a dangerous thing, I am already getting spinning curious and too much exposure to Triskellian doing drop spindling may tip me over the edge.  As a buffer to this I am buying some Procion Acid Dyes for Yarn.  I have 2 lots of yarn that need overdying and 1 lot that needs dyeing from scratch so learning this new skill should put off the inevitable learning to spin for a while at least.