Ugly Duckling Lace

While you're knitting it, lace looks terribly unimpressive--a lumpy bunch of nothing. When people ask "What are you knitting?" and get a closer look, a doubtful expression comes over their faces. Poor delusional knitter, they're probably thinking. She thinks she's making a swan, but it's just an ugly duckling.

But how wrong they are! Every lace ugly duckling grows up to be a beautiful swan.

I made Evelyn Clark's Flower Basket Shawl for my mother for Christmas. This is what it looked like while in progress and before blocking:





And here it is completed:





That's my mom, in sunny Florida, photographed by my sister Betsey. (Mom, you look so beautiful, as always!) Looks like the pretty little neighbor cat who comes to visit her every day decided to get in on the photo shoot. Here are some detail shots I took before mailing it to Mom:







The beads are cobalt-lined sapphire seed beads from the WEBS bead store and the yarn is WEBS's Valley Yarns 2/14 alpaca/silk. So soft and light. I really enjoyed knitting and blocking it. I had 500-600 yards left on the cone from my Emily's Firmaments Shawl, which was enough to work 13 repeats of the Flower Basket pattern. I would have liked to do 14 or maybe even 15, but I ran out of yarn and time.

My other recent lace ugly duckling was a crochet project, Sharlene Boyce's Crocus Bud Shawl. In progress, it looked like this:



Once it was blocked and the stitches opened up, it looked like this:











The yarn is Knit Picks Shadow, a merino laceweight, in Sunset and Oregon Coast (I overdyed the latter gold). I alternated the two colors, with a long band of gold in the middle, and worked each end differently, to make it asymmetrical. The blocked dimensions were 18 inches wide by 72 inches long.

You really don't need much crochet experience to make this. It's ridiculously easy--perfect for a first crochet lace project.

I have one other Christmas lace project to show you, but can't share it just yet. I'll be back later in the week with that, plus news about things I have in the works for 2009. I hope you have had very happy holidays and are enjoying this last week of 2008!

So I Lied

I'm afraid I misspoke in my previous post when I said it would probably be my last until after Christmas. I forgot all about the Christmas stockings for the office mice, which I definitely must show you.



Our office mice Christmas decorations are coming along nicely. Doreen made a fireplace and brought in a mini tree and mini ornaments. Tekla made a tiny crutch out of matchsticks and mini mice family portraits to hang above the mantel. In addition to the socks, I crocheted a hearth rug. (My boss--Tekla--suggested an oval rug would be best, so I discarded my original plan to knit a striped rectangular rug. I guess that's the mark of a good boss--she really pushes you to go that extra mile.)





Doreen even wrote a letter to Santa for the mice.



Click on the images to embiggen. Tiny paper chains and more fun stuff to come . . . it's going to get even better!

A Red Herring

I can't blog about most of my projects right now. Either they're not at an interesting stage (who wants to see a plain stockinette sweater sleeve?), or they're a design project and not ready to be shown, or they're Christmas gifts, which also can't be shown.

But last night I did a little swatching, and the swatch turned into an actual project, and since it's not a gift, I can show it.



Pattern: Kinetic by Norah Gaughan
Yarn: Valley Yarns Northfield in Garnet, a DK weight blend of merino, baby alpaca, and silk
Needles: US5 24-inch circular

The pattern can be worked as either a scarf or a wider wrap. I cast on 46 stitches and am getting an 8-inch-wide scarf, which is just perfect. The two sides are not identical, but the wrong side has its own appeal. Here's what it looks like:



This may be my last blog post until after Christmas. Which is probably just fine, since I imagine that in the next couple of weeks most of us knitters will have less and less time for keeping up with blogs. Best of luck to you on your holiday projects!