A journey in lace

Knitters love to receive yarn, especially when it is gorgeously soft, and a beautiful colour. So, when I opened the package containing some red cashmere lace yarn from The Knitting Goddess this week, I gasped with pleasure! It is so very, very soft, and the red is a deep, deep rose colour. It is perfect for the shawl I am planning which will feature the Shetland rose lace pattern that I so love.

Since the yarn arrived I’ve done yet more swatching for the leaf lace border. I want the leaves to look more separated than they do in the swatch featured in my last post. However, lace design is not easy, and I tried out several different stitch combinations before I got a result I was entirely happy with.

First off I tried completely separating the leaves, with a centre stitch column running between the two leaf columns. My initial attempt resulted in the leaves appearing serrated on one side – not a look I wanted.

serrated leaf edge

Then I had the leaf stalk joining the next leaf. Although this was an improvement on the previous look I decided I’d rather have the stalks joining the leaves in pairs across the centre stitch column.

Joined to leaf above

This looked better, yet there was an odd single strand joining the top of the leaf to the centre stitch. It wasn’t consistent with the rest of the knitting, so it had to go!

the odd strand

To lose the odd strand I initially had a treble decrease at the top of the leaves in the new scheme. I’m working to make this design as accessible as possible to other knitters, so this wasn’t a great option.

a treble decrease

Finally, by shortening the stalks a little I got it working the way I wanted. It’s a 12-row repeat with distinct pairs of leaves joining across a centre stitch column. It is worked in stitches that will be familiar to any lace knitter. Every alternate row is purled plain.

Easy! ;0)

result!!