I'd like to make a lace scarf because why not? I've never made a lace scarf before. I'm using a design from Brigitte Bellon's Kloppelmuster fur Schals und Tischlaufer
Last Saturday morning I decided to devote the weekend to prep work--making a pricking and winding bobbins. The day before I had gone to the photocopy store and made 6 photocopies of the design (at 120% size; thanks for the spiderly advice). I thought that was an excessive amount to make, but I wanted to have piles in order to make sure I didn't have to make another trip to the photocopy store. As it turned out, I ended up using all six. I barely had enough. I thought making the pricking would be easy. So I just went and cut the pricking templates from the photocopies. The templates didn't fit together. I tried again more carefully. They still didn't fit. Realizing that I apparently couldn't just sit down and start cutting, I got out a piece of paper and carefully wrote down what I was doing. This resolved the problem. However, even armed with a working planI still managed to mess up one more attempt before finally getting templates that worked. Here's what I found out when I wrote things down: for a scarf, I need a beginning pricking, an end pricking, and two middle prickings for vamping the yardage in the middle. I want the two middle prickings to be identical because that is more aesthetic and also so I don't have to decide ahead of time whether my scarf will use an even or odd number of middle repeats. It looks like the book wants me to use the same part of the design for both beginning or ending (a little hard to tell since the book is in German and I can't read German), so I just need one pricking for beginning and end both. So here is what I start with, when the prickings are all laid in order next to each other: start--middle1--middle2--end XX-- XX -- XX -- XX The "X" represent the unknown left and right edges of the prickings. Now I start cutting. I cut out the right edge of the start pricking. Call that edge A: XA -- XX -- XX -- XX Now since the start has to interlock with the middle, the left edge of the middle pricking is determined. Call B the edge that interlocks with A, and remember that the two middles are identical: XA -- BX -- BX -- XX. Now the two middles have to interlock and the left edge is B so the right edge must be A again: XA -- BA -- BA -- XX Now the ending has to interlock with the middle so it must be B: XA -- BA -- BA -- BX Ta-da! So the start and the ends have different edges. I can't use the same pricking for both start and end. Or more accurately, I can both use the same pricking for start and end and also use the same pricking for both middles. Either the middles are different or the start and ends are different. I think with some thought maybe I could have figured out how to make A=B, like maybe if I maybe the edge absolutely straight instead of wavy, and then I could have made both the middles be the same and reuse the same pricking for start and end. I'm happy enough with separate prickings for start and end. I usually use the insides of cereal boxes for prickings. I cut up the cereal box, tape the photocopy on the box, prick, remove the photocopy, and with colored pens draw in the pricking markings. However, because this is my SPECIAL scarf lace project, the first scarf I have ever attempted I went for the fancy-schmancy blue prickings. I laid the photocopy onto blue cardstock and then covered both with sticky (on the bottom) transparent bluish plastic cover, so that the photocopy was sealed onto the cardstock. I didn't put any additional markings on the prickings (the photocopy already had markings) but if I had wanted them I would have had to draw them on the photocopy before sealing with the plastic. The prickings were so big that I used up all the blue plastic I had had lying around unsused from many years ago. I'll have to remember to buy more form my bobbin lace supplier. After finally getting the prickings done (I haven't actually pricked the second middle piece with the pricker, but I don't need that to start the scarf so I can do it at my leisure) I started on bobbin winding. The scarf design has a trick to it so I only need 24 pairs of bobbins even though the scarf is three times that wide so you would expect it to need 72 pairs (much thanks to spider Antje for pointing that out to me BEFORE I started winding bobbins!). Many, many hours later I'd gone through a skein and a half and had wound 18 pairs. That night, Sunday night by now, as I put my stuff away an unexpected old fragment of memory from many years ago drifted to the surface of mind. Back then I spent a few months learning how to weave. I suddenly remembered that my how-to-weave class spent a fair amount of time teaching us not to dress a loom directly from the yarn skein. So on Monday I searched the internet and found lots of posts from knitting sites emphatically instructing that you should never knit directly from a skein (also they said that the USA uses the word "skein" for two types of yarn configuration. It's fine to knit directly form the good one. The bad one, which is what I have, is also called a "hank"). Following instructions, I carefully draped my the half skein I had left over a tall chair and wound the yarn up into a ball. Then I did the same with my full skein of different colored yarn that I would use for the last pair. Then the next time I fairly rapidly finished up my bobbin winding. I don't think the instruction is exactly that I must never wind bobbins directly from skein. I think the instruction is that whenever I use a skein I must spread it out totally, not let it bunch up, and I put something in the center so stop the loops of yard from merging. So: a chair back, an arm and a foot, two feet. So if I want to just pull yarn out without giving the matter any thought I need to wind the yarn into a ball. So once a project is started I need yarn to be in a ball so I can just toss it into my little bag of lace necessities and it's handy if I need some yarn to replenish a bobbin. For starting the project, since all the bobbins are wound at once I could wind directly from the skein but I found it easier to break winding into two steps. Step 1, solely concentrate on getting the yarn from skein to ball while fending off the cats that attack the draped skein. Step 2, solely concentrate on winding yarn around the bobbin and measuring the correct length. My prepwork is almost done. The only problem now is that I have to decide how long to make the fringe of my scarf. I would have liked to have put off this decision until the scarf was done, but the fringe at the beginning side is put in when the scarf is started. I can shorten it afterwards but not beforehand. So I want a length that I won't think is too short but at the same time is not so long that I waste a bunch of yarn on cut-off fringes. Yarn that I spent many hours laboriously winding on to bobbins, and yarns whose wastage means that I will need to replenish bobbins that much sooner. Julie Shalack Laurel, Maryland, USA - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
