3 Comments:

A well-earned success finally within your grasp! Well done!

By  KathyR, at 6:47 PM  

Oh Bess, that is gorgeous! It's going to be stunningly beautiful.

By  diann, at 6:07 PM  

Now that is a beautiful border. Your shawl is going to be gorgeous. Catching up again, I had to laugh when I read about your day with nothing to do but eat fruit and knit cashmere. That truly sounds like a sybaritic day. :) Happy birthday month!

By  cathy, at 11:43 PM  

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Proof of Cashmere Knitting

After a week of struggling with this border I am at last seeing progress. The first border I planned to use - (see French Trellis Border on page 98 of Victorian Lace Today) - proved beyond my counting skills. It was also a surprisingly heavy border for such a lacy looking scarf. I am guessing the yarn and gauge I'm working with contributed to the heaviness but it really was the counting that defeated me.

I looked for a lighter, more open border pattern. I found several in the same book that came in as multiples of 8 or 16 rows and combined them to create this border.

Much lacier. Much more open and, though it, too, tried to crush my enthusiasm with multiple counting errors, I eventually got in the mathmatical knitting groove and I'm almost at the point where I can knit this by reading the fabric instead of following the pattern. It's "true knitted lace" which I am told is called so because a hole is created on every row - that is - there are YO's and some form of K2Tog on every row. Trouble is, it's hard to see what you should do next when you're on the purl side.

I'm not sure if my ultimate success came as a result of the many times I knit (and ripped) this pattern or because I finally put stitch markers in. Likely a combination of both. Someone on Ravelry suggested I knit swatches of the lace pattern and, in a way, that's what I did. Many swatches knit onto the shawl with the same strands of poor tortured cashmere.

Which should be a testimony to the reslilliancy of Hunt Valley Cashmere Yarn. It seems to me I will have to go to MS&W again next year if I want to peruse her stock. Alas, she has no website. Here is a somewhat closer view of the yarn - keep in mind that it was knit and ripped at least 8 times.