Last night I did what every good knitter does in a time of stress: I cast on a new project. Not just any new project, but a particularly challenging project—in this case a lace shawl from a Japanese knitting book.
I am twenty-eight rows in and, while I don’t have the number of stitches on my needles that I should (at least I think I don’t; I could be misreading the numbers on the diagram), I do have a number of stitchs that is a multiple of the pattern repeat I’m coming up on, so I’m hoping things will be ok. I have found an excellent web site with some good information on knitting from Japanese books (Knitting Elegance), and I also have a student coming to my office hours later today who’s a native speaker of Japanese (he has no idea what he’s in for!), so I am hopeful I will be able to continue apace.
I’ve gone one step further in complicating this process—rather than using a lace or fingering weight yarn (I believe the pattern suggests a yarn with 200 meters per 40 grams) I am using some Fiesta Ballet in the Madrid colorway.
This yarn is a yummy, yummy blend of alpaca and tencel, so I am hoping for good results despite the odds.