Lace Baby Shawl

Recipient: ?
Designer: Moi
Pattern: Untitled
Due: No date
Colours: Unknown
Yarn: Unknown laceweight
Planned status: To redesign
Notes: Pattern to be for my book
Pictures: None

2006-May-11

Going through JennyRaye's scavenger hunt list and seeing some really incredible examples of lace motifs there gave me some new design ideas for what I could do with this shawl. So now I'm re-energized and way more positive about being able to come up it. I'm still probably not going to have time this year to work it all out, but at least I'm not in the doldrums about it and thinking that I can't do it.

2005-Oct-26

It is with a sick heart that I admit here on this blog that I am probably not going to make this in time for the baby's birth. Heck...with all the projects I have planned, I'm not even sure I'll make this in time for the baby's first birthday!

The problem is that the lace is just not as nice as I want it to be. I know, I know, lace always looks like nasty noodles until you block it. I don't think that is my problem. The problem is that I used the wrong lace pattern to punch out the shawl's design motif, and it just looks weird, even when I stretch it out to see what it would look like post-blocking. I think I know what the right design should be, but even then I'm not sure it would look that good.

The problem is that the motif is not one which uses nice, 45-degree angled lines, thus creating a nice smooth edge along the outline of the shapes - which, from all the lace stuff I've looked at and the designs I've come up with that ended up looking like crap, appears to be necessary when working images in lace. So I'm either going to have to: a) do more lace research to come up with a way to do the motif which will actually look good; b) rework the motif so that it has 45-degree angled lines; or c) come up with a totally new motif which does have 45-degree angled lines. Any way you slice it, I have to frog everything I've done so far, redesign my chart, and give up the idea that this will be done before the baby comes.

I care not.

Okay, I do care...but not enough to let it stop me from producing the shawl the way I want it to look. I have a vision, dammit. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way of that.

So instead, this particular baby will be getting something else. I think I'm going to cobble together some celtic-looking cables (possibly of my own creation, possibly lifted from some of Elsbeth Lavold's Viking stuff), and do up a blanket instead. Fast.

2005-Sep-1

Got another row done on the commute this morning. What with all the increasing, it's getting harder and harder to finish one row in a decent amount of time. But I'm over a quarter done the shawl (pre-edging), so it's not like I'm not making progress. It just seems like I'm not making progress.

2005-Aug-25

I've been taking this to work with me most days this week, and some progress is happening. I am, however, only 23% done.

2005-Aug-15

I've transferred the work onto my longest 4mm circular, which means I am better able to see how the pattern is coming along. Let us say that I am both pleased and displeased. The pattern idea certainly is working, but on the other hand, my lacework is wonky enough that I am relying very heavily on that knitting thing which says that the true magic of lace is in the blocking. (Please, oh please.)

Oh, also, The Schedule says that I'm supposed to finish this week.

Go on, feel free to laugh. It's certainly the funniest thing I've heard in a while.

2005-Aug-12

Flushed with the success of having begun the armscye division on the Stornaway sweater, I decided to take this project to work this morning instead. I've done a few rows so far today, and hope to surge ahead even more by the time I go to bed. I'm getting a tiny bit more confident that I won't run out of yarn. I've got three cones in all, and it doesn't look like I've used up even half of the first cone, yet I've completed over one-sixth of the project. On the other hand, I don't know for sure whether all three cones have the same amount of yarn on them, so I might still be screwed. Plus, my visual assessment of how much of the cone I've used up could be for crap. And I'm too chicken to break out the postage scale to see for sure whether or not I'm doomed. Stay tuned for the continuing drama.

2005-Aug-11

Apparently I cannot do basic math. In my last entry, I wrote that I had about 150 rows left before the edging. This was incorrect. The real number was actually closer to 130. And after last night's knitting, the number is 125.

Of course, this is all a moot point because I don't know what the heck I'm going to do for the edging anyway...

2005-Aug-9

Progress is crawling forward. I've got about 150 (ever-increasing) rows left before starting the edging, and only two weeks (according to The Schedule) to do them. Ha! Despair is starting to set in.

2005-Aug-4

Work proceeds. I got a few more rows done last night while watching the travesty that was the Canadian Idol results show. (I am still staggered and incensed that Casey has not once appeared in the bottom three. Clearly people are not voting based on performing competence. But I digress.)

I tried this morning to take a picture which shows off the nice shimmery-ness of the silver yarn, but without giving away what the piece looks like (since I will be trying to publish the pattern). This was the best I could do:

Oh, well. Trust me - in person, it's sparkly.

2005-Aug-2

Over the weekend, it hit me that this project has moved my penchant for difficult knitting from the realm of 'merely amusing' into 'downright disturbing'. I think the moment this all came home to me was when I realised that the last row on this ever-expanding shawl was going to have over 1,200 stitches in it.

Yeah, you read that right. Twelve. Hundred. Stitches.

Why am I creating this design in the hopes of publishing it if no one but myself is stupid enough to actually want to knit it? Ah, a question for the ages. Nevertheless, the work continues.

I went shopping at my local Zellers this weekend in search of the yarn for this project (among other things) and came up completely empty-handed because the craft section there SUCKED ROCKS. I am so annoyed. They had just two (count 'em, two) balls of sock yarn left and a paltry selection of fingering weight yarn (two colours - one of which was, heaven help me, green). I left the store yarnless and went home to rummage desperately through my stash, which is notoriously bereft of lightweight yarn.

However, I came across the laceweight yarn I'm using for my Catherine Howard sweater. It's a 70% wool/30% rayon blend, is definitely soft enough to use for baby stuff, and I have it in three colours - blue, silver and gold (and I do mean silver and gold, not just grey and yellow, because the rayon component has nifty sparkly bits). Now, I will need most of the blue for the sweater, so I couldn't use that, but I really liked the idea of using the silver or gold. By this point, however, I had realised just how freaking huge the project was, and was nervous that I would run out, so I chose the silver, because I have more of that than the gold (and I'm still nervous about running out).

After several false starts (I hate knitting in the round starting out with a small number of stitches and having to do yarnovers between DPNs), I finally got it going and have done about 60 rows so far. Given that there will probably be about 210 rows by the time it's all finished, 60 rows sounds like I've made tremendous progress, right? Nope, because the pattern adds 12 stitches to every other row. So I'm not actually over 25% done. Rather, I'm around the 9% mark. Odds of finishing this in three weeks? Slim. Especially since I never actually completed a whole test pattern before starting the real shawl (yes, dumbass, I know) so I don't even know if the pattern will look good. I'm working on faith - I guess I like to live on the edge. Stay tuned - things will probably get real dramatic, real fast.

2005-Jul-29

In an attempt to stop the fruitless attempts at designing a decent-looking pattern, I made a template of how the motif should look, in pen, and then attempted to put a lace design within that template, in pencil. This was a good decision. I'm now testing the latest stab at the design, which has the motif worked completely in lace, surrounded by solid stocking stitch. So far it is looking very hopeful, although admittedly I'm only about eight rows into it. I'm crossing my fingers that the pattern will emerge properly as I keep going.

2005-Jul-26

I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. These include:

poring through any lace knitting books I can find at my local library for help on how to render complex shapes in lace

having the pattern I want be worked completely in lace eyelets instead of merely being outlined in lace eyelets

having the pattern I want be worked in solid stocking stitch on a lace background, instead of working the pattern in lace on a stocking stitch background

designing a romper for this baby and saving the lacy shawl idea for someone else

Stay tuned. Any help you want to offer would be tremendously appreciated.

2005-Jul-25

I'm continuing on the test pattern. Not only is it taking forever, but I'm getting increasingly depressed that the lace is not looking the way I want. I am beginning to come to the conclusion that I just don't have enough experience knitting lace yet to really know how to do what I want to do. Moreover, I've been hunting on the Internet for some references, and all the books which look like they would help me figure out my problems are so obscure that they are not available from my local libraries or from any major online booksellers. AUGH!!! Clearly this is going to take longer than I thought to design. And in case you were thinking maybe I should do something else for this baby? GIVING UP IS NOT AN OPTION. Dammit. (Janet.) Don't worry. I'm not out of ideas yet.

2005-Jul-22

Yesterday I completed the first draft of the design and started testing it. The problem is that in order to test the entire pattern, I have to knit an entire sixth of the blanket, because the pattern does not really repeat. The pattern stretches over the whole of one triangle (and there are six triangles in the blanket, since it is a hexagon). So the testing takes for-freakin'-ever - I'm not even close to done yet. (Further proof - like you needed it - that I instinctively do things the hard way.) So far it's looking fairly good, although I am not happy with what the eyelets do in some spots. But I am holding off on fiddling with the design until after I see how the whole thing comes out.

2005-Jul-19

I have decided to try and design a hexagonal lacy shawl for this baby - another design for my book. I've never really designed lace before, apart from a half-hearted effort about a year or so ago, so there is a possibility that the finished project will suck rocks. However, I think the idea is pretty good, and I'm very hopeful that I can make it work. I'm planning to use fingering weight yarn on 4mm needles, and will probably make it in the round so I won't have to go through the bother of sewing it up afterwards. My first instinct was to make it in green, since I don't know the sex of the baby, and green is a nice, gender-neutral colour. But then I gave myself a big mental slap upside the head and decided to go with a colour that I hadn't already used for my last umpty-gazillion projects. (Besides, the sweater I made for this family the last time they had a baby was...you guessed it...green.) So, I'm leaning towards white or yellow. Yellow appeals to me more because it's a more exciting colour than white (which of course technically isn't a 'colour' at all). Plus, it wouldn't show spit-up stains as much. Either way, my stash is inadequate for the task - Zellers doesn't carry fingering weight acrylic in bulk, so I only ever get a few small balls at a time. Therefore, I will have to go shopping for more yarn. Awww, shucky-darn. :)

2005-May-16

I'm still leaning towards the lace circular shawl idea. I did some designing last night and I think I've come up with a motif that I really like. Now all I have to do is figure out how to translate it into knitted lace.

2005-May-15

DH's family expands again! The baby is due around December and I'll be taking the opportunity to design something else for my book. Don't know what yet, but flushed from my success with the Snowdrop project, I'm thinking maybe a circular lace shawl-y thing would be nice. But then again, maybe not. Stay tuned.