Here's what I've got on the needles right now - my first-ever lace shawl! I'm not so much into the wearing of the shawls, but I was dying to try knitting one of these insane creations myself. (I do love tedious, interminable, hand-and-eye-destroying craft projects. Why?)

Anyway, this is a laceweight alpaca yarn, and I hope I find the label somewhere in the disaster area that is my craft room, because I can't remember the name of it. I chose this weird army-like khaki-grey color because I was concerned about the preciousness of lace shawls, and worried that I'd never wear the finished thing. I hope this color will help to offset the frilliness of the shawl itself.



Pattern? I'm working from this fantastic book called Knitting Lace Triangles, by Evelyn Clark. I can't recommend this guide highly enough. I didn't know the first thing about lace knitting when I picked this up, and it has enabled me to essentially design my own shawl. The book explains all the basics you need to know, then provides four lace patterns to choose from, which can be mixed and matched however you like, and worked at any gauge, to any finished size. I've used two different pattern repeats, a diamond thingy and a chevron, and I'm just winging it and switching them up whenever I feel like it. I chose patterns which will hopefully result in a graphic look.

Even though I started this over the summer then put it down for a while, I am newly obsessed with this project. There is something so satisfying about the symmetry of the pattern repeats, and seeing them take form - I just can't put it down.



Lace knitting isn't hard at all. However, it is easy to make mistakes, and it's quite difficult to correct them! I don't know if I was being dumb or stubborn, but I knit all of the above before I finally got with the program and started using a lifeline.

The lifeline is the pinkish horizontal thread you see in the dismal (sorry) photo above. It's pretty genius: after you complete a row that you know is correct, use a blunt-tipped yarn needle to thread a contrasting piece of yarn through the stitches on the knitting needle. Then keep knitting. If you make a mistake a few rows later, just take your stitches off your needles and rip back to the lifeline. That humble piece of yarn acts like a little emergency knitting needle and holds all the stitches in place - they won't unravel past the lifeline. So you can just stick them back on your needles and knit again, without having to figure out where the mistake happened, or how to fix it. Move the lifeline at regular intervals so it will always be close by if you need it.

The lifeline has been like couples therapy for my shawl and me. We are so much happier together now! I have spent HOURS picking out rows and re-knitting them on this thing, and I would by lying if I didn't admit it has caused quite a bit of yelling and swearing. (One errant stitch will throw off the entire pattern, so everything has got to be perfect.) Yesterday I made a mistake which caused the chevrons to go off-center. Normally this would cause me to wail and gnash my teeth, but the lifeline made correcting it altogether painless. I love you, lifeline!