Teaching Lace Knitting

Yesterday I taught a class on the fine points of knitting the Swallowtail Shawl.

This is the first lace shawl I ever knit. In fact, it was the first lace knitting of any kind I ever did. There were a lot of things that I needed coaching for that I had to figure out on my own. I ultimately incorporated many of those things into my teaching. Techniques like: a slipped stitch edge, easy ways to make 'nupps', how to read the lace that has already been knitted, lifelines, adding beads as you go, etc.

It's a pretty ambitious shawl to do as a first lace project but once I had it 'under my belt' any other lace projects were well within my grasp.

Then I knit another (this one with beads) for display at Myrtle Station Wool to promote my classes.

It really is a lovely shawl - shown here in its smaller size with 14 repeats. It can also be knit with 19 repeats of the budding lace for a very large shawl.

My students did very well and are well on their way on their own Swallowtail Shawls. I like how the pattern is written for three weights of yarn (laceweight, fingering and DK) including the yardages required for each.

After my first Swallowtail Shawl, I discovered Evelyn A. Clark's "Shetland Triangle". I knit that one with Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace and tiny silver-lined pink beads.

I then knit her "Angel Lace Shawl" using 2 skeins of Dye-Versions Soy Soft yarn.

On each point, I used silver-lined beads that exactly matched the colour of the yarn.

After the class was over, Stephanie, the Myrtle Station Wool proprietor, showed me the new Regia sock yarn pattern book "Classic Styles" No. 611 and I LOVED the lacy shawl on the cover. The pattern is so new, it's not even on Ravelry yet.

I grabbed some tonal Punta Yarns Space Dyed 100% Merino Lace yarn and started knitting it up. I'm on row 49 of 129, which sounds like I'm pretty far along except that it's a triangular shawl and the rows keep getting longer and longer. The lace pattern is very easy so I whip through those sections pretty quickly. It's the purl rows that slow me down. Yet, I persevere.

The Regia patterns are translated from German into English so do not necessarily use our customary knitting phraseology and the charts use completely different symbols, but once I actually sat down and read through the pattern, I was able to interpret the instructions pretty well. I would not, however, recommend Regia patterns for inexperienced knitters.

In non-knitting news ... this morning, Skip and I went to see "The Town" at the movies. It was fairly good. I'd give it about an 8 out of 10. Skip and Scooter's favourite movie rating website, Rotten Tomatoes, gave it a 94%!!!  Did you know it only costs $6 to go to the movies at the AMC theatres before noon? We love getting a deal.