Thursday, September 4, 2008

Stormclouds, part 2

After studying many pictures of the shawl, I realize what I need to do to make it for myself. 6 to 10 repeats of feather and fan make more than enough body on the shawl to comfortable wrap around the shoulders. For love of numbers, I think I'll go with 7 on size 7 needles.

As for the border, I really must thank my fellow ravelers who took pictures of the lady's circular cape while it was a work in progress. Seeing the lifelines really helped me understand how the shawl was knitted. The border has several construction elements.

1) A provisional cast on at the neck to be able to pick up live stitches for the collar which is constructed out of the lace border.

2) Half of the lovely border edging on the bottom of the shawl is actually knitted after the feather and fan motif is finished. It's predominantly in stockinette and garter stitch as far as I could see.

3) The border is one that I have never done before. Eep! It's one where you start with a little bit of a live edge and pick up stitches from the end of the work AS YOU GO ALONG IN ROWS. It's hard to explain, but I understand the construction. Double EEEP because I don't understand how they did the "corners" at all. With the feather and fan construction there are no real corners, because the shape of the knit rounds them out a little.

I'm going to have to dig around in my books for lace edgings. So far I'm leaning towards point edging, wave lace edging, and cypress from A Field Guide to Knitting. I'll have to dig through my vogue magazines to see if they have anything I like.

No comments:

Welcome to Crazytown, where my friends have proclaimed me queen. Why did they do that you ask? For some reason, there's very little that I fear about knitting. Hmm, a dress in laceweight done in lace knitting written by vogue? Sounds great! I have very few inhibitions when it comes to knitting, and that sometimes ends disasteriously. Apparently, other people think this signifies a level of crazy that only the royalty can attain. Follow along with my escapades as I dive head first into all sorts of insane techniques and projects without much more than an "Oh! That looks pretty, I can make it!"

Those will probably be my famous last words.