So what is hot in the Knitting World right now? Lace shawls, that’s what. Every yarn-y website, every yarn-y email in my inbox, every yarn-y magazine is a-flutter with lace shawls!
And that makes sense because we are about to jettison into Summer and what is better Summer knitting than a lovely lace shawl? Nothing, really. Certainly not 2 wool blankets.
Which is what I am supposed to be knitting. A long-awaited baby blanket and a nearly overdue wedding gift blanket. Both warm and wooly with nothing lacy about them.
I am also supposed to be knitting 2 linen tops — one just begun and one nearly finished. Both requiring about a million (more or less) rows of plain (more or less) stockinette. Nothing (more or less) lacy about these either.
Don’t get me wrong. I really want to finish these 2 wool blankets and I really, really want finish my linen tops. But I really, really, really want to knit a lace shawl right now!
Actually, I do have 2 lace shawls in my knitting bag (it is like Noah’s Ark around here — I have 2 of everything!). The romantic circular Shipwreck Shawl and the darling little crescent Limonade. (Limonade would look particularly fabulous with both linen tops, by the way) So it is requiring an exasperating degree of self-discipline to put in time on the stockinette wasteland of linen and even more so to haul wool blanket knitting out to the deck (did I mention it is in the 80s here just now?!).
And when I take a break to check my email or look up something on Ravelry, there’s another lace shawl draped wantonly over a rattan chair or a deck railing or a model who is clearly living a more exotic life than I am. Sigh.
If you know me at all, you know that I am a sucker for lace shawls any day, any time, all year long. You know that I have little resistance to lace yarn, less resistance to lace stitches — and I swoon unashamedly in the presence of particularly lovely lace shawl photos.
And, in my world, sunny Summer afternoons were definitely made for lace knitting on the deck in the shade. O, lace!