A Complex Lace Knitting Project

I know I’m supposed to be spinning: it’s the Tour de France/Fleece, after all. But I’ve been sitting on my hands for a long time, itching to get back into a complicated lace project. I have some beautiful laceweight silk I’ve had for longer than I can remember where I bought it, and since the Diamas shawl calls for exactly this kind of yarn, I stopped fighting the urge.

All knitting is basically looping successive rows of string together. When you mirror the stitches on the back you get the familiar smooth front and bubbly back most people are familiar with. You can cross these stitches (cables) or you can insert pairs of yarnovers with decreases to make openwork lace. This particular pattern also features nupps, an Estonian-style bobble in which seven knit stitches are inserted into a single stitch in the row below and then gathered together at the top, making for a textured highlight.

I have some travel coming up and a good lace project to get my teeth stuck into will be great. But I’ll insert a second lifeline when I get to the end of the current chart (there are three), in case I mess up. I finally broke down and paid for a subscription to KnitCompanion because this is a complex enough pattern that I can use the extra help keeping my place. Ripping back to where you made a dumb mistake is never fun….