After my sketch, it became clear to me that I wanted a lace pattern with verticals – you know how I’m always trying to look taller ;-)! I looked through all my stitch pattern books and came up with a couple that I liked, but ruled them out as being too finicky. I am going to do a fashion lace design which is a little trickier than the plain lace that I most often use with the Silver Reed. Plain lace is as easy to knit as stockinette because the Silver lace carriage transfers and knits at the same time but if you want movement in the lace stitches, similar to full-fashioned decreases, then you need to change the cam setting to P, take the yarn out, transfer according to the pattern (a specific number of rows), rethread, set the cam to Lace (or back to stockinette which I prefer as a safety net – if you happen to be on the wrong row, it will at least knit all the stitches instead of dropping them or messing up what you already have transferred) and knit two rows. Because of this, I like choose a fashion lace pattern that has the same number of transfer rows throughout so that you can develop a rhythm to the knitting of yarn out, transfer 8 rows, yarn in, reset cam, knit 2 rows, yarn out, transfer 8 rows…
I
swatched two that looked promising. Keeping in mind I don’t want to be wasting
my good yarn and knowing that this 4 ply acrylic, Tamm Trenzi (I am using
orange because I am not likely to ever want to knit anything real with this) usually
lace knits at T5 without any issue, that’s what I began with. Looking at the
bottom of my swatch, I want to say I did this on purpose so you could see what
my stitch pattern looked like, but, truth is, I was so excited, I just began
knitting lace, without transferring first – so now you know if this is what your
lace knitting looks like, you did something wrong. Realizing I was in error, I
knit 2 plain rows and then began the real thing – I did 14 rows in the orange
which means, 8 transfers, knit 2 rows, 14X (I did tell you, this is not real
quick) and I could see everything was working well, time to throw in some
similar cotton! The blue is Bonita, which I have used extensively with my lace
carriage so I do know it works but I don’t remember using it for fashion lace.
It is working beautifully also at one full number higher (T6 – see Tumbleweed,
Knitwords #53). My heart is pounding! I’m so excited. I put in the other
pattern (there are 10 transfer rows between each 2 rows of actual knitting) and
again in the orange acrylic, things are going smoothly. I switch to the Bonita
and all is well. With this one, there is a space in the patterning of 6 plain
stitches and I think, that’s kind of boring, how about we try a 2X2 cable in
there? It works too, but I decide that would just be asking for trouble or
showing off. I knit enough so I can get a good look at the right side and opt
for the first one. I’m ready to commit! I love the verticals of lace and the
way the transfers are making the biased lines up toward the two-centre-stitch lines.
I had been contemplating doing the sleeves in lace also, but I think I’m going
to stick with my original sketch for now. I’ll keep you posted!P.S. I found another small part cone!!! I’m making the real swatch!
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