Just playing around with lace

Sometimes I cleave to only one project, and sometimes, I just want to have fun. This week, with all the unusual rushing around, I'm not getting anything big done, but I am finding small corners of time to play.

I was picking up books around the chair in my study, and my old and now indispensible Mildred Graves Ryan's Complete Enclycolpedia of Stitchery, fell open at the page for this lace. Having recently dug in the pile o' yarn, I knew I had a yarn that would make a fine looking scarf and that a scarf would be a great way to practise this new to me lace stitch.

I can't remember the name of the stitch. The book is at home (sigh for my lack of memory). Whatever its name is, it is one of several I have seen that remind me of a candle's flame or the flower bud of a moonflower just before it bursts open.

The lace is very, very, very simple. I had it memorised after the first half of the pattern, and the second half is exactly the same, just shifted over a half set of stitches. For simple to remember lace stitches, it rivals 'old shale'. So far this lace scarf is proving to be a nice, extremely relaxing knit, full of rewards.

The yarn is Bernat Softee Baby in the Denim Marl colourway. It's a splity, unforgiving and firm to work with yarn, and yet for all that, it is producing a very soft, cuddly and pleasing project. It is harder to make an even 'slip one, knit two psso' stitch combinations than I prefer, but for knitting lacy projects with acrylic, it will do.

All along in my adventures learning to knit, and finding knitters and crocheters online, I've wondered why crocheters en masse have stayed quite comfortably with acrylics and plant fibres. Reading the various crochet forums like Crochetville, and Crochet Me reflect that most crocheters are still using the old easy to purchase standbys. They are using all the newer yarns, but still are more likely to use yarns with very large acrylic content. With all the myriad of very good inexpensive wool and alternatives, why do they stay with what they have used for years? Why did I, until I took up crocheted socks and then came to knitting?

Crochet never left me craving something more from a yarn. In crochet, with its lone needle you don't have the interaction between the two needles of knitting. You are not trying to manipulate two points over a connected fibre below, you just have one needle and one stitch to work with over the fibre below. You end up requiring the stretch and ease of animal fibre knitters much less often.

Knitting this lace in this good quality acrylic is doable but as you work, the knitting needles crave stretch, crave give that just isn't there. In all the grand debates knitters have over acrylic versus wool, I'd be interested to watch how people knit, how they hold their needles, how they hold their hands, to see if yarn choice is aligning with a style of knitting that just requires less ease in a yarn. Do knitters who choose to avoid animal products for health reasons or personal choice, end up adjusting their knitting style to accomodate the yarn?

I don't know that I will ever give up looking for nice feeling strings. My searches at my trips to my LYS are all about playing touchy feely. Feely first, then look at the label. Same thing at the big craft places. It always begins with feel.

What I do know for certain is that I am paying much closer attention to what a yarn can do well.