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.Pretty (Ugly) Lace.



There are those knit projects that make you instantly feel like wow, this is looking amazing. Lace shawls are definitely not one of those.

I've been knitting for 10 years, but I knitted my first lace shawl only a year ago. It's not like I hadn't knitted any lace at all, I had done all kinds of bits and pieces with lace motifs but shawls were not part of my repertoire. I was never pleased with the way my lace creations turned out, and I guess I thought big lace shawls would be too hard for me or too much effort. I had never heard of blocking either until about 2 years ago (oh yes, a totally new world opened before my eyes on the day I learned to block my works!) so that contributed also to the fact that I thought all my lace was ugly.

A small note: As I have mentioned a few times earlier on this blog as well as on Ravelry, I’m a self-taught knitter: everything I know about knitting I’ve either figured out for myself through trial and error and a lot of unraveling, or done a lot research on the matter by reading books, magazines and internet as well as watching Youtube videos. 

I started to knit a long lace shawl a few days ago and was already on the verge of giving up, because it looked horrible. Just look at the photo below.


So I set my needles aside for a while to think things through one more time before unraveling everything I had done so far. I tried to pull and stretch the fabric to see how it looks, and then decided to wet a small section of it and pin it to dry overnight. And lo and behold! The lace looks actually pretty good. A new-found hope to stop me from frogging this shawl and keep on knitting! This is a trick I have to remember in the future every time I'm losing my faith in lace.


P.S. I named this shawl Koi No Yokan. I first heard the term as the name of Deftones’ album (I like their music) and later learned it means ”Premonition of Love”. I kind of like that concept. I can’t remember the first time I saw my husband Magnus, so I can’t say our love was love at first sight, but in a way I can’t explain I knew from the very beginning he was something special. In some sense I knew that he was the one, even before we even spoke for the first time and even I could call the feeling love. He has said he felt the same way about me.



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