trial and errors...

I’ll admit, it was a few weeks before I had a chance to get down to business and there was a lot of pondering going on. I had settled on the mesh lace stitch (the tuck lace mesh from the shopping bag closes up too much unless something is stretching it out and I didn't want it to be me!;)) and settled on Montana 2 ply yarn doubled  (https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/05/brittany-is-very-fine-314-2-ply-cotton.html ).

To be honest, it was the only white cotton I had, 4 partial cones adding up to almost 950g which would be more than enough and even with the differing dye lots, they all looked the same, colour wise.

If I was knitting stockinette or tuck, there is the option of plating to make sure there wasn’t a patchy colour distribution from running two dyelots, but this was lace on the silver reed and because of the separate lace carriage, no plating allowed but my backup plan was to overdye to a light ecru shade. I’d make swatches and see what happened…

Starting with a stockinette swatch, I then programmed in the mesh lace - It wasn’t really promising…dropped stitches everywhere! Yes, I had changed the sponge bar! https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-elephant-in-room.html 

Left that on pause and went to this blog and searched lace carriage knitting - ohmigosh, a lot of reading! I was sure I had fully covered this topic but couldn’t find what I wanted - what to do if your lace carriage knitting isn’t working…

1. Check the needles. If the stitch is dropping in the same place, over and over, change the needle. In lace, it’s difficult to tell which needle, the transferee or the receiver - change both of them.
   
   
   
2. Still happening, look at the sinker posts/gate pegs - a bent one can interfere with the transfer.
3. Maybe the tension/stitch size isn’t right. Too tight and stitches drop instead of transferring.. Too loose and the transferred stitch may end up over a sinker post.
4. Even weighting - makes a big difference, too much weight and stitches don’t transfer. Not enough weight, same thing. (https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-just-have-to-tell-you-i-finally.html)
   
   
   
   
5. Change the yarn and see if that stitch pattern knits with a smooth acrylic. If it does, likely the first yarn isn’t suitable for that particular pattern - try another one, stitch pattern, I mean.

This was supposed to be a fun, easy project, not an endurance test. If you can’t make a perfect swatch, it isn’t likely to get better making larger pieces! I moved on to #5 and set up for that ‘Me  Cozy’ lace https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/04/deja-vu.html

 that I still love so much. It worked flawlessly with the doubled cotton - it has more than enough holes to be loose and airy-looking!