Challenging Projects

Pushing myself with something new

If you have knitted for long enough, you have almost certainly developed preferences for different types of projects. Some people cannot stand purling and will do everything they can to avoid it. Some people are intimidated by colorwork or cables.

For me, it is lace.

When I was living in NYC in my twenties, I attempted a lace project.¹ I got a few rows in and everything came apart, quite literally. I missed stitches, didn’t understand how to read my knitting, and botched my attempt to fix my knitting and swiftly gave up.

For years afterwards, I avoided lace like the plague. However, when the opportunity arose for me to attend Shetland Wool Week in 2022, I decided to get over my fear and signed up for two classes on knitted lace. With the guidance of my instructors, I realized that lace didn’t actually need to be as intimidating as I’d made it out to be. I learned about lifelines and reading my knitting and all of the things I’d lacked knowledge of for that first project. Lace started to feel like a welcome challenge rather than an impossibility.

Perhaps that is why I am currently working on two garments that incorporate lace into them.

Rosa Cardigan

One of the handiest garments in my wardrobe here in the UK is a cardigan, but I have a few gaps when it comes to lighter weight cardigans. Learning that my sister has just cast on the Rosa Cardigan by Along Avec Anna, I decided to do the same.² I picked up a fantastic cherry red DK weight yarn³ from my favorite local yarn shop Knit with Me in Richmond and cast on.

This cardigan features a nice, easy entry into lace in the form of a lace raglan detail forming a little row of arrows. These are the subtle details that make a simple, very wearable cardigan of mostly stockinette feel special

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Roving Summer Top

My next project is the opposite of the Rosa Cardigan in that it is all lace with nary a stockinette panel in sight. I saw the Roving Summer Top by Irene Lin Designs on a knitting podcast⁴ rounding up spring and summer patterns, and I immediately put it in my Ravelry queue. It is a beautiful, loose all-over lace shirt. I have nothing like it in my wardrobe, so I knew that not only would it be a welcome addition but it would also provide the ultimate process knit.

The pattern calls for a cotton yarn, but I decided to give linen a try for the first time partially out of curiosity and partially because I often find 100% cotton garments heavy. On a different trip to Knit with Me earlier in the year, I had picked up De Rerum Natura’s Antigone in Lune and broke it out of my stash last week to cast on

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After the initial set-up stages of the lace, I am finding this project surprisingly straightforward and satisfying. I don’t generally watch TV with more complicated knitting and full lace definitely qualifies. I have had a couple of stitches slip off the needles, but the upside of linen being a much stiffer yarn than wool until it’s worked and washed is that everything has been easy to pick up and fix.

In hindsight, I’m glad that I started the Roving Summer Top in early May because I suspect that it will take some time to work this project up. However, the process has been enjoyable and I’m loving the result so far.

What do you work on when you are looking for a challenge?

1. Unfortunately that is about the full extent of my memory of it.

2. We’re joiners, my family.

3. John Arbon Textiles’s Knit by Numbers DK in 19 KBN (Red)

4. Possibly Youngfolk Knits.