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.6 Reasons Why I Love (and Hate) Lace.



The things I love about knitting lace:
  1. Obiviously: Lace is beautiful.
  2. Lace looks much more complicated than it is, so people don’t constantly ask whether you made it yourself, more likely they will ask where you bought it. They are usually really surprised and amazed by the amount of skill you possess if you tell them you knitted the scarf/shawl yourself.
  3. Very forgiving: it doesn’t really matter if you make a few mistakes, like purl when you should have knit or ssk when it was supposed to be k2tog; the mistakes rarely show after you have finished the piece.
  4. Usually knits up fairly fast because you are using quite big needles (at least in comparison to the yarn weight).
  5. Wearable and multifunctional: you can wear a lace shawl to give a little elegance to a casual t-shirt-and-jeans look and easily use the same shawl with a dress to a party. How many other pieces of clothing can actually be worn either as a part of an everyday outfit or with an evening dress - without feeling over- or under-dressed?
  6. Lace shawls make great gifts, because one size fits all.


The things I hate about knitting lace:
  1. Definitely not TV-time knitting.
  2. You really need to concentrate on your stitches and constantly count them.
  3. It’s almost impossible to unravel, like if you want to go a few rows or a whole pattern repeat back.
  4. If you drop a stitch and don’t catch it in time, the game is over: I haven’t mastered how to pick up stitches among all the decreases and yo’s, and unraveling until the dropped stitch is not an option, see the point 3 above.
  5. A bit demotivating to knit: looks ugly before blocking (although I do love the moment of blocking: it is kind of ugly duckling turning to a beautiful swan-type of hallelujah moment).
  6. Hard to keep track of gauge and sizing, especially with circular lace shawls.

The lace scarf is almost finished. The second half is now blocking, and I still have to weave in the ends and graft the two pieces together. I just wanted to show you the difference between blocked and un-blocked lace knit. It's amazing how this mess can become so beautiful...
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Comments

  1. ElineJuly 28, 2014 at 7:16 PM

    Haha, a very good post! I like lace because it's so fast to knit with all the yarn overs, but the amount of attention it demands is a big let down...

    ReplyDelete

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