concept...

Saw a picture of Becca the bachelorette wearing what I thought was a knitted lace cardigan with satin shawl collar and I loved it. Now that I have all this experience with searching the web, I thought, this will be a piece of cake. It wasn’t really, because it was just an ad on TV, not a show but I did finally manage to track it down – this wasn’t the photo I saw, no rose and she was turned sideways -  and it turned out to be a lace fabric, not an actual knit but that is totally irrelevant, I going with what I thought. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bachelorette watcher – our cable TV comes from Minnesota and I believe Becca is from there, so it was a promo feature!

I have a semi-dress-up occasion for around New Year’s Eve and figure this would be perfect and could be used for so much more (I'm doing a seminar in Pigeon Forge, TN, March 22, 23/19 and another one in Waynesboro, PA April 12, 13/19 and even though I haven’t been to either of those places, you know how I like to have something brand new for each show).  I’m planning Wool Crepe Deluxe, black, of course and I even have a part cone of a shiny black rayon for the collar!

Have you ever had stuff for so long you forgot what stuff you have? In searching for the ultimate lace pattern for my ’Becca’, I pulled out every stitch book I had, looking for a lace pattern that was more holes than stockinette. One book in particular had several good-looking prospects. I spent the better part of an hour pencilling one design on the mylar sheet, feeding it into my Silver Reed SK580, reading it into the PE1 several times and checking for the usual mistakes. Finally got it in and knit – not what I wanted! Began to fill in another mylar and had a little tingle…suddenly I recalled that there were preprogrammed memory cards that came with this book  (they do not have a battery that would expire -https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/02/battery-operated.html )  – where the heck are they? A little searching and sure enough, I had them in hand – so much easier. Quickly tried several more samples - you might notice I'm using that gawdawful orange TAMM Trenzi that's been my waste yarn for the past two years or so. For experimenting, no use wasting WCD and as I know that T6 is the optimum stitch size for lace with Trenzi, that eliminates a lot of the usual issues when experimenting with lace. Only after narrowing down on the actual stitch I want to use will I attempt a swatch with the actual garment yarn!

life lessons...

There I was working on my fourth piece in a row – there is nothing more satisfying than completing one full lace piece without a single hitch or dropped stitch but I had 2 Sleeves and the Back done perfectly. Of course, I got cocky and thinking of you, decided to give you a little ‘shortrows with ravel cord’ lesson as a refresher, you know. Big of me, right? Yeah, I can laugh now…I was perking along, writing a few sentences, going back and knitting a row or two, checking what I wrote, taking a photo or two and feeling magnanimous and proud and suddenly realized that I blew right by the start of the vee neck shaping! ARRGGH!!!

4 perfect pieces!

I turned back my knit radar, row by row and what do you know, I was over by 14 rows – this will be a piece of cake! My stitch pattern is a 14 row repeat so I won’t even have to re-read my lace stitch pattern – just rip back the 14 rows and I’ll be back on track, ready to shape the neckline half way through the underarm decreases which I’m doing with shortrowing instead of casting off each decrease – it makes a much smoother line, is neater for finishing and I usually find it much quicker than casting off at the edge on every other row which ends up with a step line. Calmly, I ripped out the 14 rows - didn’t take too long, and of course, still feeling superior and totally confident, I re-threaded and resumed my lace knitting and shortrowing and shaping at the neck side as well. After about 10 rows, I realized the sound of the lace carriage wasn’t quite right and stopped to inspect. ARRGGH! It was only transferring the stitches from left to right and not the other way. I panicked, thinking my lace carriage was broken. OMG! This is a catastrophe! I was going to drop it all from the machine in a fit of rage but decided to leave it for tomorrow. Man, good advice, MAO – know when to walk away! This morning, down a few pegs, I checked my needle arrangement and saw that in the undoing, I had messed up the 2-working-one-not needle arrangement part way across the row so it couldn’t transfer the stitches going to the left because those needles were now out of work! And now, I had no idea what row I was supposed to be on because I had turned off the machine and reset things before I figured out the real issue. Do I abandon it or attempt to pull off the coup of my knitting life? Ah, what the heck? May as well give it a try…the machine knitting gods were on my side today! I ripped out the rows that were incorrect, guessed that I was now on row 3, programmed it and gosh, darn it worked! Life is good!
To shortrow/decrease with ravel cord and deal with needles out of work:


step1

step 2

step 3

To shortrow at right side, at underarm point, knit to left. At right side, fill in any empty needles that are within plus one of the stitches to be ‘decreased’, e.g., 5 sts. Using ravel cord, knit 4 sts back to A position. Knit to right (step 1). At carriage side (right) take next stitch back to A – this takes the place of the wrapping if you were using holding position and completes the 5 st decrease. Knit to left. The next decrease would be 4 sts. Fill in empty needles within that plus 1 and knit 3 stitches back to A with ravel cord. Knit one row to right. Take the one stitch at the carriage side back to A. Continue in this manner until all stitches to be cast-off/decreased are in A position. If there is only 1 stitch to be decreased per two rows, take it back on the carriage side only, to prevent holes in your edge. When all stitches are held in A position– carriage will be at left. Knit to right. Unthread yarn from carriage and carefully pull out ravel cord from left to right and the stitches and wraps should just pop back up into the hooks of the needles. 

 4- pull out ravel cord

5 - manually knit same size row

Take the main yarn and hand knit those stitches as close to main tension as you can get, going from left to right. Now, on those same stitches, hand knit a loose row (larger than main tension) right to left. Chain off those stitches from right to left, ending at the new edge of the work and place the last stitch on the new end needle to anchor. Re-thread and continue knitting!


6 - manually knit loose row

This gives a nice, smooth curve with a minimal edge that won’t look too thick or heavy in your finished garment, perfect for lace, tuck lace.  
Hope this makes sense!
You may notice marks of the needle bed to indicate every 9th stitch repeat for the ruffly rib - I found this invaluable - use a non-permanent water soluble marker that is easy to remove with a moistened Q-tip.


7 - cast off

Machine knit like you could earn a living at it! ;-)