Wednesday

The lace bug has bitten again. It was an email from Craftsy today that did it. They were advertising Myra Wood’s “Crazy Lace” class. I’m not sure whether I’ll take the class or just buy her book, but one or the other is definitely in my future. The Amazon description says that, “Starting with a comprehensive explanation of ‘Lace Logic’ you’ll quickly learn how and why different types of lace patterns are created.” That’s what I want. I want to not just knit lace but understand the way it works, the how and why. Stay tuned for updates.

In the meantime some knitter friends and I are knitting one of Hilary Latimer’s patterns. This one is called the Mystery KAL Shawl. We missed the pattern debut knit along, but we’re doing a little cross country knit along of our own. It’s my friend Dorothea’s fault. She’s already made one, and she wore it in my presence, and that was it. Had. To. Have. One.

One of the fun things about the pattern is the yarn it calls for—Wolle’s Yarn Creations “Color Changing Cotton.” The yarn is four-ply, and the plies gradually change from four plies of one color to three plies of one color and one of a second, to two plies of each color, to three and one going the other way, to four plies of the second color. The effect is startlingly pretty. Here’s a picture I took at SAFF this year of the bins of 185g skeins:

 

 

I got the “Unique Vampire” colorway on the top right. This was a major acquisition because, let me tell you, this yarn is very hard to come by. The Etsy shop that I linked to above is pretty much always empty. It sounds like if you can’t catch Elisabeth at a fiber show, the only way to get your hands on some of the yarn is to watch for one of her preorder offerings. These apparently come up every now and then and are announced through her Ravelry group.

So far, I’m up to Row 20 in Clue #3 of the pattern, and I’m loving both pattern and yarn:

 

 

You can’t tell much from this picture, but you can just start to see the first color change there at the top. Here’s a close up of that part:

 

 

Pretty cool, huh?

In other news, I saw this article yesterday about an Air Force Colonel who started knitting on deployments after 9/11. He said, “I wanted to learn to make something pretty, that would outlast me.” He’s now knit 40 scarves, 68 hats, and at least 40 pairs of house shoes.