Tara asked an interesting question the other day:
I want to knit my friend a wedding shawl (more detail on my blog) and can’t seem to find the perfect yarn or pattern…I’d rather make up my own then buy one. I greatly admire the shawls you’ve designed and I have a question: how do you decide what lace stitches go together and how many repeats to do before changing to the next?
I’ve been giving this some thought. How do you decide what stitches go together and how many repeats to do before changing to the next?
I realized that it’s something I just . . . well . . . do. There are certain lace stitches that just seem to go together. I think of a shawl (a triangular shawl anyhow) as having three major components — the body of the shawl, the border, and the edging.
As for how many repeats of each pattern, I think that in my head I think of the body being roughly two-thirds to the border’s one-third. And then the edging is just the gravy.
But . . . what stitch patterns go together? beats me. Some just do. And I think a lot of this is subjective. There are patterns that I don’t like, that I think look “eh,” that other people love. And there are patterns that I love that other people hate.
What do you all think?
Sky
Skye
I did indeed finish the back, and started the front. In case you wondered, it is possible to pick up 122 stitches along the straight edge of the lace edging in the time it takes the train to go from the Pentagon to Metro Center.
Just in case you wondered.
P.S. to Sophia and Bosco
Lucy would like Sophia and Bosco to know that her Greenies are shaped like tiny fish. Isn’t that neat?
“I wonder if there are any Greenies in here?”
This week L-B told me that the Petsmart near her is out of Feline Greenies. That made me a little anxious — what if there were a worldwide shortage of Feline Greenies?
Go without Greenies? Not my little princess!