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Lace Knitting

Miniature Counterpane

I knitted the miniature counterpane from some bedspread cotton, using patterns from Mary Walker Philips's book, "Knitting Counterpanes."

Rose of England

Believe it or not, the Rose of England from Marianne Kinzel's "Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting" was very easy to knit. In fact, most of it was knitted while commuting on buses to work! This is the small ("tea cloth") version, measuring about 36 inches across. I didn't have enough cotton or stamina to tackle the large one. Knitted in size 30 cotton.

Floral Doily

This doily was begun in quilting thread and finished with 100/2 cotton thread on size 0 needles. The pattern is from Burda, probably a Herbert Niebling design.

Screaming Peacock Doily

Bright enough for you? This version of Medrith Glover's Peacock Facecloth has been changed slightly. I added more holes in the tail feathers and used the "Primrose Edging" from Barbara Walker, A Second Treasure of Knitting Patterns (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), p. 371. The original, in fingering weight cotton on size 3 needles, measured about 13 inches across. This smaller version, in Freccia N. 12 (Coats Cucirini in Milano, Italia), on size 1 needles, is 9 inches across.

Irish Diamond Shawl

This pattern is from Cheryl Oberle's book, Folk Shawls. The yarn is a blue-green ("Caspian Blue") single from Green Mountain Spinnery. (Feb. 2001)

Blue Trifolium Shawl

The pattern is from Marianne Kinzel's "Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting." This was the first wool shawl I ever knitted. In those days, it was extremely difficult to obtain lace-weight wool in Israel (it's not easy now to find wool in Israel but at least mail order from abroad is an option) and I unplyed hundreds of yards of a cabled yarn, to reduce it to three strands of 2-ply yarn. I ran out near the border, so I unplyed some green cabled yarn.

Cotton Shetland Shawl

This is my largest failure to date. Five years ago I stumbled upon Sarah Don's The Art of Shetland Lace in a used bookstore. Fired with enthusiasm, I decided to knit a shawl out of the only fiber locally available, cheap crochet cotton. At least, I think it's cotton--I didn't know about burn tests in those days. I chose a baby shawl pattern, substituting a border pattern which I preferred to the trees in the original, in the trapezoid-shaped pieces around the center square. I finished it, blocked it with a zillion pins on the floor during a heatwave when I was 8 months pregnant and discovered that I'd made . . . . a giant doily. The cotton was far too stiff and coarse to drape the way a gossamer shawl should. So it sits in a drawer, awaiting the day when we own a table to go under it.

Cat's Paw Shawl

This shawl was somewhat more successful. It's an adaptation of Charlene Anderson-Shea's Cat's Paw shawl from Spin Off, which was an adaptation of Martha Waterman's Cat's Paw shawl in her book, Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls. I prefer lighter weight shawls for our rather mild winters and I frequently knit square shawls in half, as triangles. I personally feel that the lace pattern shows up better when there's only one layer.
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