I got the yarn from Louisa Harding's studio in the Byram Arcade in Huddersfield, along with the pattern. The design is Olena, and it makes a scarf so light and airy that one 50g. ball of yarn makes a good sized scarf (mine is about 135cm. x 25cm.).
Louisa intended the scarf to have beads in the lace for the first few pattern repeats at each end of the scarf:
But I'm not a beaded scarf sort of person, so I left those off. I also didn't do the picot cast on, though I did try it - I couldn't make it look neat, so just did a regular cast on.
The lace pattern is really beautiful. It's not one that I know, but could well supplant Print o' the Wave as my favourite lace stitch.
I did a lot of the knitting in public, i.e. in the various knitting groups that I go to, but that wasn't a very good idea. I made a few mistakes in the lace. the worst being near the beginning when I had to unravel about 15cm., which at that point was more than half of what I had already done. I did think about leaving it, because I thought that no-one else would see the mistake, which is probably true. But I am very glad that corrected it, because now it's perfect. I made a few more mistakes, but I made sure to check more often, so correcting them wasn't such a big deal.
Louisa promised that washing the finished knit, to get the spinning oil out, would make a huge difference - the cashmere would 'bloom'. And she was right - it felt quite soft while I was knitting it, but now it is delightful. Very soft, warm, and light, and the colour is gorgeous too - not quite solid, a lovely grey-blue. I love my scarf.
Congratulations. It's beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I think so too.
DeleteWhat a beautiful scarf. It makes me want to do some lace knitting - I'm so easily influenced!
ReplyDeleteIt's quite a long pattern repeat, and I never managed to learn it, so this is perhaps not a lace pattern to start lace knitting on. But it's certainly worth it.
DeleteWhen I was knitting my first cashmere project - a simple lace scarf - I used to make people hold out a hand so I could drop the whole scarf into their palm, then say, "Can you feel any weight? How about heat?"
ReplyDeleteI retrospect, I was probably quite annoying, but I just wanted to share my delight :)
p.s. Shortly after that project I bought my first cashmere goats.
I do sympathise - my own scarf is so amazingly light and soft, and I want everyone meet to feel it to appreciate how wonderful it is. I haven't yet felt the urge to buy any goats though.
DeleteI love this pattern and how beautifully your scarf turned out! I've just started it and could use your advice. I also want to leave out the beads. How is the stitch count worked without them? There are places where the pattern would read a double yarn over. How did you alter the pattern to make your stitch count work without the beads? Thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteApologies for the late reply - I'm sure I did write a reply much earlier, but there's no sign of it. I can't remember doing anything special to knit it without beads, so I'm not sure I can help, I'm afraid. As far as I remember, I just followed the pattern but didn't put beads in...
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