Shetland Lace Workshop

Tari in progress

On Saturday afternoon, at the Knitting & Crochet Guild convention in Derby, I did a Shetland lace workshop led by Sarah Alderson of Wessenden Woollies.  We started knitting a shawl that she has designed, Tari.  I had brought a skein of laceweight yarn for the workshop, but after struggling with it for a while, decided that it was too fine for me - I found it hard to knit with and kept making mistakes.  So mid-workshop, I dashed off to the stash-busting table where Guild members had put surplus yarn to sell, and bought a cone of wool in a lovely emerald green (£2).  It's not a colour I would normally choose, probably, but I'm glad I was pushed into it (it was the only laceweight I could find on the table).  I don't know anything about the yarn except that it's wool and fine enough to knit the shawl pattern with 3mm needles, but not too fine for me to knit. 

I had barely got started with the green yarn by the end of the workshop, but I have now finished two pattern repeats - enough to show the lace patterns emerging.  This is one end of the final shawl - the garter stitch section on the right gets wider, and then narrower again.  I think it's going to turn out very well.  

It will need blocking (when it's all finished) to show the lace design properly - here's a section of Sarah's own shawl to show what the lace looks like when it's blocked. 

There were four other workshops running at the same time as ours - an Irish crochet workshop led by Sally Magill was in the same (big) room as ours, so I saw what they were making too.  They had produced some very nice motifs in two hours - shamrocks, roses, scrolls.      

Marie's blue shamrock

Rose and scroll

Sally's sampler of Irish crochet motifs 

The other three workshops seem to have been equally successful - all led by Guild members.