Lacey Disaster

Oh the colors!  Oh the price!  Can you believe I found this stuff at Big Lots for $1 a skein?  And fingering weight, no less.  Seemed like the perfect poor-woman-who's-dying-to-knit-lace miracle.  Ok, it was acrylic poly blend, but I've killed acrylic before and it's turned out fabulously soft and drapey.  So I bought five skeins and started knitting lace immediately.  But a niggling little voice in my head just kept getting louder until, after a single repeat of the 16 row pattern, I snipped a sample from another skein and knitted up a tiny 1.5" x 2.5" swatch.  Better be safe than sorry, right?

I eagerly killed it with a steam iron.  Looked at it, frowned, and killed it again.  And again.  And, finally, did a thorough masochistic, complete and utterly vicious, I-will-melt-you-if-I-have-to, you stubborn piece of textile you, kind of job.  In vain.  The polyester content (not detailed by the yarn band) defeated me and the swatch remained stubbornly.. scratchy.  Acrylic-y.  Not nice.  Disastrous.  Wail!!!

So, with more than a few tears (it's so much more beautiful and exquisitely colored than this photo), I consigned the lot to Ebay.  It sold in a few hours.  But I am once again yarnless.

Oh, the sad state of a woman who can't bear acrylic or poly, who's allergic to wool (mohair, angora, etc), and can't have alpaca next to my skin for too long.  Do you know how hard it is to find hand painted fingering weight cotton (or silk or exotic plant fibers or tencel or rayon) that's affordable?  It's not that I'm not happy to shell out for the beautiful stuff, I just don't have the shells to shell.  It sucks, but food's kind of necessary.

And did I mention that lace knitting always looks wretched, the way I knit (twisted and twisted--some call it Eastern, I think)?  All the stitches are too holey.  I guess I'm a control freak knitter who craves the nice and tight perfect stitches.  It's gonna be tough to stick to this lace thing, but I am determined to have a proper, ultra fem piece of frippery.  I may only be able to wear it in front of the tele, engrossed in a BBC costume drama or another Austin remake, but hey, that's enough for me.

Lacey Desire

Can't believe it's been an entire year.  You'd think I haven't been knitting at all!  Well, you'd be wrong.  Just gotten lazy.  And, after a somewhat disastrous attempt at my first adult bit of clothing (an insanely difficult ladder shoulder cardigan), I got understandably shy about knitting.  Failing miserably at your best friend's Christmas present will do that to you.  And I still have to make it up to her.  That attempt will be the subject of the next blog post, now that I've finally settled on a pattern.

But... on to my summer flailing abouts.  Being in a severe  money crunch means having to use up my stash yarn.  Which became my stash yarn because I didn't like it, couldn't find anything to do with it, and various other reasons.  Harumph.  But better than no knitting at all.  So, while two cowls languish on the needles (one that I love and ran out of yarn and can't afford to buy more right now; and one that just leaves me kinda unimpressed with), I  needed inspiration.

I want to knit lace so very badly!  Specifically, I want to knit the picture you see above.  But lacking funds, and since non-allergic yarn is excessively more expensive than wool... I took out the one prize from my stash, the one rare gem that I've been hoarding, and coincidentally (yeah, right) the most expensive yarn I've ever bought!  Araucania Pomaire--two skeins of hand dyed pima cotton happiness.  Making a scarf by adapting this lace pattern.  It won't block like proper lace, so it won't be obvious, but the muted sage, moss, and almost blue douglas fir green dapples nicely with the yarn overs and reminds me of an ideal forest canopy.  So yeah, it's a scarf and they are so darn tedious, but.. until some lace yarn falls into my lap, it's a good substitute.