Lace knitting
Shetland
lace
Lace
Edgings and Doileys
Orenburg shawls
Native
Alaskan lace
Faroe Isles
Faroe Island shawls
Materials:
Experiment with different types and sizes of yarn.
Needles - pointy
ones work best
Also try several different needle sizes. You want to pay
particular attention to the size of the yarn-over holes and to the
flexibility of the finished fabric.
Make a gauge
swatch. This lets you practice the pattern first (and you may
discover that knitting 7 stitches together is not something that you
would like to do), it gives you a chance to adjust the needle size
without having to start over, and it gives you a chance to block
your knitting, wash it, throw it in the dryer and otherwise abuse it in
ways you would not want to do to a beautiful shawl.
Also, keep your swatch. Then when you need to make a repair to
the finished object twenty years from now, you will be able to find the
matching yarn.
If you are making a garment where knowing the finished size of your
knitting is essential, take the time to block the gauge
swatch. Waiting a day to start knitting is much better than
knitting an entire sweater and then having to give it away to someone
who is significantly bigger or smaller than the person you knit it
for. If you just can't bring yourself to knitting a gauge swatch,
think of it as a size issue. You can make a swatch that is
roughly 4 inches square or you can make a gauge swatch that is roughly
the size of a sweater. Which one would you rather rip out or
discard? If that doesn't work and you're knitting a sweater, knit
a sleeve first. And be sure to buy extra yarn.
Techniques:
Casting on:
If you are knitting a shawl or a scarf that is mainly lace, you will
want to have a very loose cast-on because the edge needs to be able to
stretch when you block. The two main ways I do this is to use
either a knitted
cast-on or a cable cast-on. Another cast-on technique
you may need to know is a provisional
cast-on.
Knitting the lace:
Lace knitting contains a lot of yarn-overs
(yo) and decreases.
If you are knitting flat (not in the round) and you always slip the
first stitch of each row, you will get a very nice looking edge.
On the other hand, slipping the first row will make the edges less
stretchy. My advice (as always) is to knit a fairly big sample of
lace where you slip the first stitch of the right side rows but just
knit (or purl) the first stitch of the wrong side row. After you
block your sample, you then can see how much each side stretches and
use that information to decide.
Correcting mistakes:
Mistakes happen. Some are easy to correct if you catch them
early. (If you discover you forgot a yarn over on the previous
row, just pick up a bar between the two stitches where the yarn over
was supposed to be. If you discover you have one extra yarn over
in the previous row, just drop it.) Others are much harder to
correct and involve some form of ripping out. You can unknit
(often called tinking) if you are a cautious person. Or you can
slide all of the stitches off the needle and rip out several
rows. Ripping out has the advantage that you can take this
momoent to get a more accurate impression of how big your knitting is
at this point. It also has the disadvantage that you may find
yourself ripping out far more than you intended (like the entire
thing). This is why you need
Lifelines:
Take a piece of slippery yarn that is a different color than the one
you're knitting with and thread it through the stitches on your
needle. Then go ahead and knit as if it isn't there. Should
you need to rip out several rows, you will find it much easier to rip
out down to this yarn and then pick up the stitches. Needless to
say, you probably want to do this about every ten rows (or at least
once in each pattern repeat).
Binding off:
Just as you need a stretchy edge at the beginning of a project, you
will also need one at the end of the object. Many people just use
larger needles to bind off.
Blocking:
Blocking lace turns it from a rather ugly, bumpy, funny looking
thing into a thing of beauty. If you block your gauge
swatch before you start knitting your project, you can look at the
swatch to remind yourself that your finished object will not be covered
with blobs.
Blocking your gauge swatch first can save you lots of heartache.