Friday, June 22, 2007

How hard is lace?

I am in a bit of a quandry at the moment. I want to knit a lace stole. I want a lace stole to go with my brown silk dress I intend to wear to the only wedding we have this year (30th September). However, since I found out about Mystery Stole 3, I really want to knit THIS stole (even though I have no idea what it looks like, it sounds fun).
I've followed lace patterns for socks, and read charts, but I've never knit with laceweight yarn. In fact there are only 4 skeins in my stash - 2 Knitpicks from a SP and 2 lilac skeins from Posh Yarns. Neither of these add up to enough, so I have asked Natalie over at the Yarn Yard to custom dye me some organic laceweight merino in a light brown that will go with my dress and the left over beads I have from Odessa.
I'm worried I won't be able to do it and then I'll be really disappointed.
Do you think I should start with something smaller - like Branching Out from Knitty?
I think I need to practice some lace before I start... maybe I'll do some swatches on the trip down south this weekend. Unfortunately I think they'll have to be in leftover sock yarn as that's all I have with me. Have a lovely weekend and I'll be back on Sunday with a picture of my home-made swift!

4 comments:

Wendy said...

Roo - go for it, lace is not that hard, honest! If you can do yarn overs and k2tog and read a chart you can knit lace. Doing the mystery stole would mean you'd have other people to yell at for help....I'm still considering signing up myself. I have cobweb mohair left from the wedding shawl I finished the other week and a bag of seed beads that would go well with it. So if you want some moral support.....

Bryony Ramsden said...

If you are on a deadline, I'd recommend going for a pattern you can see first rather than an unseen pattern, so you know whether it looks right. I'd recommend Sarcelle (a pay one I'm afraid), or Gerda at I Dream of the Sea is a beautiful one for free. Neither requires any major shaping with lace (although Sarcelle is knit on the bias, but no harder than any other shaping you've done with the pattern design), so you won't have to think about too many elements at once :)

Anyway, whatever you decide, good luck with it, and just take it easy. And buy LOTS of blocking pins...

Ling said...

I say - go for it! I don't think lace knittig is too bad especially as you'll be doing it with loads of others as well.

Knits & Stitches said...

Hi, it's Rachel from Ravelry. I am working on my first lace stole. I geared up with and Easy Lace Scarf from Knitter'sReview.com. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. Go ahead and dive right in! :) The stole I'm knitting is the Princess Wrap from Classic Elite Yarns.com. It's free and not too hard.