Things I Learned From Knitting: ...Whether I Wanted to or Not by Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee

Author:Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee [Pearl-Mcphee, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Crafts & Hobbies, Humor, Knitting, Needlework, Non-Fiction, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781603421003
Google: kuKpQ21fe3wC
Amazon: B003PGQK5A
Publisher: Storey Publishing
Published: 2008-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

the 22nd thing

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

— Chinese saying

I AM PRETTY SURE that lace knitting is the best value in the knitting world. If we think of knitting and the money we pay for it as part of our entertainment budget, then lace really is the best bang for your buck. In general (though there are some exceptions that can burn a hole in your wallet faster than a night at a casino with free drinks), yarn is sold by weight. This means that 100 grams of worsted weight wool is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 220 yards. Because it’s so much thinner, 100 grams wool laceweight is probably going to run about 1,000 yards or more, while not being much more expensive. Add to your figuring the fact that because of the patterns and general fiddling it requires, lace takes longer to knit and it won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that what you’re spending per hour of knitting entertainment is going to be a lot lower for lace. Toss into the mix the fact that you’ll be creating an heirloom that will knock your own socks off, and suddenly, you can understand what so many knitters see in lace.

Now that I’ve offered this compelling evidence, I feel that in the interest of knitterly honor, I must warn you that there’s a downside: While this is one of the best knitter’s tricks around, lace knitting has a much higher chance of costing you your sanity and leaving you feeling as though you’re a few jalapeños short of a zippy salsa … if you catch my meaning.

Those of us who’ve fought and won have learned what’s important to know about lace knitting. First, because lace is all about not just your stitches, but the way you make them, anything related to your technique that you have always done in your own quirky way is now going to matter a lot. For instance, if you’ve never been really hung up on whether your decreases lean left or right and you start knitting lace with that attitude, you might be headed for a world of disappointment.

Second, because lace has a pattern that usually “stacks” on top of previous rows, you can’t fudge anything. If, like me, you usually just knit two together if you find you have an extra stitch at the end of a row, your lace is going to be out of alignment pretty quickly, and that’s going to make you crazier than a bag of wet cats. Lace is a precision game.

Finally, everything I’ve written about lace up until now — the fineness, the pattern, the precision — ends up meaning that unless you’re a lace-knitting machine with no human failings at all, you’re going to end up tinking from time to time. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of lace. Those of us who just yank out the needles and rip back until the world makes sense again — that’s not always a good option with lace.

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