Of course it's lace, and beautiful too. I know how to knit from an ordinary
pattern, but I find those diagrams in the lace knitting books quite
incomprehensible. I'm wondering what you do if you misread the pattern or
make a mistake, I imagine you must have to undo the error and fix it to keep
the pattern correct. What thread is it knitted from and how much does such
a large piece take? What size are the needles?
Ahh, but not all lace knitting books are charted.. or I'm assuming it's the charts that make most knitters blanch. In fact the Rose of England is from Kinsel's book of Modern Lace knitting and has both written out (like a jumper pattern) instructions and charts.
Both are done with cotton thread, the Rose in Clea, which is a soft non-mercinized cotton that claims to be size 10, but is more a size 15. (Crochet cotton sizes.). It used just under 1000 m of cotton. The spiral was done in a crisp vintage cotton, size 30 Gem brand. It got a band of yellow when I ran out of cream. As I was using up leftovers, I've no idea how much it took, although the cream ball of cotton (which I dont think was full) claimed to be 350 yards when full. Old enough not to have metric on it. Sudden colour changes are a hazard of working from stash sometimes! ;)
I used 2 mm needles (Size 0 to US folks) for both of them. I wanted a little more body to the softer thread so used larger needles than I might normally for that size cotton.
Yes, mistakes involve picking back (tinking in the knitting world.. tink is knit backwards. ;), so that you keep the symmetry of the pattern. Like anything, I suppose, there's a point where you consider the pattern, consider the error and decide if you can live with it. If I've used a left slanting increase and the pattern called for a right slanting decrease, I often dont mind too much. A missed yarn over increase so you dont have enough stitches.. that I mind! ;) Some mistakes can be fixed on the fly, and some involve picking out most of a row or two.. or for the brave, laddering down one or two stitches and reknitting just those couple of stitches. Blocking forgives all sorts of tension problems with doing that. :)
The hardest part of lace knitting in the round is the beginning where you have not many stitches on multiple needles (often 8 stitches to 4 needles).. after you get a couple rounds in, it's no harder than knitting mittens, or perhaps gloves. <grin> I find bobbin lace MUCH harder to do!
Thanks for asking and I hope I haven't bored you all to tears.
Heather -- who's nearly halfway into the next doily. Stress makes my production speed fly apparently! ;)
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