Lace Odyssey: Queen Silvia Shawl
EDITED TO BRING YOU PRETTIER PICTURES. Thanks to everyone who’s stopped by and commented: it’s really nice to be welcomed to the neighbourhood, so to speak.
I love lace. I love watching the designs emerge from YOs and decreases; I love the logic and flow of the pattern. I love the fancier manouvers: nupps and gathered stitches. I love the feeling of accomplishment you get when you pull it off the blocking needles: any lace shawl or stole is an Undertaking, and there are so many different patterns and constructions that you need never knit two similar objects, let alone the same thing twice. Lace projects make me feel cleverer than any other kind of knitting, and Estonian lace makes me feel cleverer than any other kind of lace. It is no secret, then, that I love Nancy Bush’s superlative book Knitted Lace of Estonia with an all-consuming passion.
For the past (long) while, I’ve been working on the Queen Silvia Shawl from that book. I’m using a lovely cobweb-weight merino-silk blend from Posh that I ordered last year. Here’s an older photo so you can see the pretty, pretty yarn:
And here’s another photo, more recent, that shows how the stitch pattern is beginning to emerge:
This pattern is nupp heaven. Only two right-side rows lack nupps or gathered stitches, and the delicate shapes they form put me in mind of elaborate crowns. I’m usually a fan of tighter-gauge lace — I take after Eunny, that way — but I like to knit at a looser gauge when there’re nupps involved. The textured elements, I think, show better when the matrix fabric is arier and more open.
I’m more than halfway done the centre panel, now, and can’t wait to get to the Lace Jellyfish stage. (Perhaps better known as the pick-up-all-edge-stitches-and-knit-in-the-round stage, but it looks like a jellyfish to me. Either that, or a foppish, floppy hat… Perhaps I spend a bit too much mental energy on this.)
