Wednesday 8 August 2007

Joining the Border Gang....

Yes that means at long last (it does feel longer than 4 months) the body of the VLT Sampler shawl is complete and to prove it.....


It's going to be big without the border and blocking it's about 5' 5" and 20" wide :0 but it's finally complete.

I didn't think it would come out quite as big as the yarn is quite fine [finer than it was meant to be :S) ] The yarn should have had 250m in a suposedly 25g hank (it's sold by length) however on weighing the hanks after starting they turned out to be approximately 22g which means that the yarn I thought was 10 m/g was in fact just over 11 m/g if I had known this at the beginning then I would have used 3mm needles instead of 3.25mm and it perhaps wouldn't have come out so huge...... so far I have just started into my 6th and final hank so I'm not sure if I will need to purchase more; however they do still have some smaller skeins (25m) of this dye lot left so I'm not sweating too much......

So along with Fleegle, lacefreak and missalicefaye I will be starting on the edging but not until weekend.

I now have questions for people if you don't mind....

I'm contemplating buying Hazel Carter's "Shetland Lace Knitting from Charts" and was wondering if any of you have it and what you think of it? or if you have recommendations for any other Lace books, I do have a few already....

I'm also asking what's your favourite lace yarns those around the 10 metres per gram mark (it's just my way of calculating how fine lace yarn is for comparison), the reason being I'm going to be knitting the Alpine Scarf from VLT and just thought as I'm not paying for the yarn it would be nice to experiment with a different yarn.... I don't do fluffy yarns such as KSH and don't want a cotton based yarn, preferably a merino or merino blend, so if anyone has comments or suggestions please leave in the usual manner.... TIA

Finally thanks Fleegle for the Norwegian Purl link, I will give it a try when I've watched it a few times..... perhaps trying it after a glass of wine will help ;)

2 comments:

missalicefaye said...

Welcome to the club! :)

I have the Hazel Carter book, but I've really never used it much, as Sharon Miller's book covers pretty much the same material. Send me an email if you have other questions about the book!

fleegle said...

I am with MissAlice on the Hazel Carter book. Sharon Miller does it better. That's the bible for Shetland lace.

My suggestions for yarns in the range you specified would be Suri silk (Ocean Knits at Wool Girl has beautiful stuff, Lisa Souza's Alpaca, Zephyr, and Touch from Yarn Place. Cherry Tree Hill has Possum Lace, but it's a bit pricy.

Yeah, I had to watch that video twenty times, but it's a fabulous technique when you finally figure it out.