December 2020

Molly • Entrelac and lace • Daisy chains • DFW Fiber Fest raffle • Little Barn Studio • Holiday sale

Molly

In teaching Slick Set-in Sleeves last month, I discovered that Molly was no longer being sold by Shelridge Yarns – which is a shame, as it’s a fun cabled pattern, with saddle shoulders and waist shaping. And it’s totally seamless!

But I was given the go-ahead to start selling the pattern myself, yay! So the pattern is now available in my Ravelry store.

Entrelac and lace

And in giving a presentation on entrelac to a guild last month, I rekindled my love affair with entrelac. I found the motivation to start a project I’ve been meaning to do for years: knit a stole similar to the Forest Path Stole by Faina Letoutchaia. I’ve always loved its use of multiple lace patterns, and the way the edges of the units created gentle, undulating curves when blocked.

True to form, though, I wasn’t interested in knitting Faina’s pattern. That had already been done and proven. Rather, I wanted the fun of coming up with my own pattern: making all the necessary decisions and then finding out, in the end, if they worked, if the decisions added up to a pleasing whole. (Yes, I’m a process knitter – but you knew that already, didn’t you?)

So, I pulled out my Estonian stitch dictionaries – because Estonian lace is easily my favorite kind of lace – and started swatching.

And I finally chose three stitch patterns to use, and got started.

You’ll note that the entrelac units aren’t “on point,” to borrow a quilting term. This eliminates the need for base, side, and top triangles. You’ll also note bits of red waste yarn, for provisional cast-ons and for holding live stitches. The plan is to work all the units, then pick up stitches around the stole before adding a border. Holding live stitches with the waste yarn means the border will be more fluid than if those stitches has been cast on normally or bound off.

The WIP is four units wide, so I think the finished stole be about 16" wide, depending on what sort of border I choose. Top contenders right now are a simple border of garter stitch (as for the swatches shown above), or a bit of garter stitch followed by an attached edging like Tiny Edging.

The other decision yet to be made: how long should the stole be? 60" long, maybe? We’ll see.

Daisy chains

Contrary to “standard” entrelac practice, I’m maintaining chain selvedges (slipping the first stitch of every row, and knitting the last) rather than stockinette selvedges. And I’m picking up and purling on the right side, and knitting on the wrong side.

picking up and purling with RS facing

Picking up this way curls the selvedge to the right side of the work. And since I’m creating chain selvedges, the end result is a pretty daisy chain on the right side.

I figure it’s a fitting approach for this lace stole. Actually, it’s something I do fairly frequently when picking up stitches from an edging – for example, with Emma.

Then again, Emma is reversible – entirely based on garter stitch – so having a daisy chain on the “right side” is kind of a moot point. Still, you get the idea: I like these daisy chains.

DFW Fiber Fest raffle

The DFW Fiber Fest had to cancel last April just before the event was to take place – meaning that the volunteer team running the show had to scramble to un-do months of hard work. It was heartbreaking for everyone involved.

But now that cloud has a tiny silver lining. The team is raffling off the door prizes that had been donated to the event – and I gotta say, they’re some pretty awesome door prize packages! Raffle tickets are just $1, and you get to choose which packages you’d like a chance of winning.

Me, I’m not telling you which packages I bought tickets for; I don’t want any of you lowering my chances of winning! But do hurry, as the tickets are on sale only through this Saturday, the 5th.

Little Barn Studio

Remember how I said last month that Lucy Neatby was, sadly, shutting down her website? Well, now some good news! Some aspects of the site will be preserved by Little Barn Studio – namely, pattern sales, and “virtual DVDs” aka instructional video downloads.

There is a small catch, though. For reasons of data privacy, the items you have in your Notebook on Lucy’s site cannot be automatically transferred to Little Barn Studio. Rather, if you want your past purchases migrated to the new site – so they’re always available to you “in the cloud” – you’ll need to send an email to make that happen. Details are in Lucy’s most recent newsletter.

Holiday sale

Speaking of instructional videos... If you've been eyeing a Craftsy class, now’s the time to make your purchase.

From the 11th to 25th, you can get 20% off an “own forever” class purchase with coupon code HOLIDAY20. That's any Craftsy class: knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting... drawing, woodworking, cake decorating... the list goes on and on.