I have been tussling about with my Malabrigo Baby Silkpaca lace yarn (not in any way a bad thing to be tussling with!) figuring how to make it become the kind of piece I want it to be using the kind of technique I want to use. In this dream I have of replacing pieces I wear all the time (but did not knit) with pieces that I knit (and will wear all the time), I planned to replace my lovely woven cashmere stole with a lovely hand-knit silk/alpaca stole. It is a beautiful idea! I have 840 yards of Silkpaca — which is a great start. I want to use a simple, easily memorized lace pattern to speed up the knitting process and make it an easy pick-up-and-work-on project (no chart to work from).
So I swatched and changed needle sizes and swatched and changed needle sizes. I wanted a fabric similar to my woven stole — and kept moving to finer and finer needles until I was using 0s and getting a fabric that was dense enough for a carpet!
I had begun to think that I would have to change yarn altogether when it (finally!) occurred to me to check Ravelry and see what others had made with Silkpaca, what needle size they used, etc. Well, over 800 Ravelers have used Silkpaca in projects with gorgeous results! Lots of shawls, stoles, etc. — but some sweaters as well. I fell in love with Silkpaca all over again! And saw that it did indeed work up nicely (really, really nicely) as a stockinette piece with lace edging. And needle sizes tended to be in the 4-6 range. very reasonable!
So, as Sarah had suggested some days ago (good advice which I had not followed, I’m afraid), I pulled out Jane Sowerby’s Victorian Lace Today for practical inspiration and happened to open it at the Wide-Bordered Scarves section. Of course! What I wanted was, in essence, a large wide-bordered scarf! Make a big gorgeous edging, work a lot of plain-ish knitting for the body of the piece, finish with the big gorgeous edging. Poof!
All this led me (I am cutting to the chase here) to Mrs. Hunter’s Pattern — a simple 4-row Shetland lace pattern (the Hunter family has been knitting lace for British royalty since Queen Victoria’s reign — so what is good enough for them is good enough for me). And since I located 2 slightly different versions, I played with both (and a hybrid of both), chose the one I want (the top of the swatch) and am happy with it worked on nice sensible size 4 needles.
I am currently shopping for the Big Gorgeous Edging to go with it — a delightful process which involves thumbing through my stitch pattern books. Meanwhile, I am making steady progress on the edging of the Leaves of Grass shawl (which I have told myself I should finish before embarking on this lace stole).
And the armadillo? Well, I am knitting an armadillo to cheer up Sasha who was feeling blue this week. She perked up when I showed her the photo of the pattern and said “yes, please!” as she has a thing for baby armadillos just now.