Art of Knitting Lace

I have knitted some lace, but am by no means an expert. I started with a knit-along of a "Mystery Stole" where there were quite a few people knitting the stole. The "Mystery" part was that the instructions were released in parts; one section a week. I liked this because although I did not know what the finished project would look like, having it doled out in pieces kept me from panicking. The other people in the Knit-along were there to answer questions and offer support.

This was my first experience with lace and I was pleasantly surprised by how breaking it into small parts, with encouragement and tips from "real" lace knitters, made the process a great learning experience. Nothing like having a group of people who are knitting and ripping back together to make you smile.

The book The Art of Knitted Lace has step by step instructions, with preferred lace knitting techniques or specific cast on's and bind offs best suited to lace. There are also instructions on how to read charts, (one glaring omission though is on page 11, the square with a small dash in it, that says, "knit on the WS", should also say "purl on the RS". Where WS means wrong side and RS means right side). In addition, there are tips to fixing mistakes, putting in a lifeline, blocking, swatching, etc. Finally there are patterns.

The patterns are a mixture of easy, intermediate and experienced. Since style is completely subjective, I will only say that very few of the patterns made me say, "Why would I ever knit that" (see the silk stockings on page 53). I loved most of the patterns and because of the great instructions and charts think this is a good starter lace book.

The biggest challenge with lace is not the actual knitting it is in the correcting. There are two ways to do this; first insert a life line. A lifeline holds stitches in place when you have to rip back. I take a piece of dental floss or smooth, thin, light colored cotton yarn and thread it on a blunt needle. Run the floss or yarn through every stitch on the needle (it works best when you are using circular needles and have put all of your stitches on the cord), then continue to knit the next row, taking care not to pick up the life line. When you make a big mistake you pull out your needles and rip back to the lifeline, the life line keeps you from dropping stitches unexpectedly. Second, if the mistake is simple enough you can isolate the problem area and just drop the stitches down one at a time and correct the problem and then continue up the ladder.

Go ahead and try to knit some lace!