Sunday, February 22, 2004

I often have these unrealistic fantasies about being a Shetland lace knitter. I imagine myself sitting in a serene uncluttered quiet environment listening to classical music working on the most complicated and beautiful cobweb lace bedspread with gossamer threads, uninterrupted for hours on end.



In actuality I'm usually knitting while simultaneously cooking and doing laundry, occasionally dodging a psychotic cat who jumps on my head while DH is watching shrieking sportscasters on tv and a certain female rabbit is loudly hurling herself about her room hoping we'll come in soon to play Scrabble. Unfortunately any "real" lace knitting is out for the time being and I have to content myself with small less complicated lace projects.



Sorry - it looks like I moved one of my hands while scanning for this photo.







The pattern is the Vanalinn gloves from the XRX book A Gathering of Lace. The pattern designer is, who else, Nancy Bush. The original pattern calls for 1 skein of Satakieli (a fingering weight yarn from Finland very much like Koigu) and size 0 dpns to get 8 stitches per inch. With my Nylamb (a now defunct baby/fingering weight wool/nylon yarn) I was getting 9 stitches per inch but I love the way these look a bit tighter. Any soft fingering weight yarn like Koigu would work really well.



Thank you all for your comments about these gloves. I'm having trouble seeing all the Squawkbox comments on my blog again (perhaps because I use Netscape?) so I can't respond via Squawkbox as I was doing previously but they do all come to me via email.



I'll say it again - these are REALLY easy although they look more complex! All you need to know is how to knit in the round and do a YO, K2TOG, and S,K,PSSO. The lace pattern is easily memorized, you can readily figure out what row you're on, and half the glove (the back side) is stockinette so the knitting goes even faster.







If you look at the base of the thumb on the back side you can see the YO thumb gusset increases. I guess they look okay on these lacy gloves but I've made a note on Merike's Gloves in Folk Knitting in Estonia to NOT do them that way. I prefer a M1 increase instead.