The Next Big Thing

The impetus behind finally getting (making) myself a yarn swift, after having done without for more than 20 knitting-years, is this one particular project that has been forming in my mind for awhile now. I bought a skein of Lorna's Laces Helen's Lace, 1250 yards of 50/50 lace weight wool and silk, color "Vera", at Rosie's Yarn Cellar in Philadelphia in the fall of '07. I didn't have a project in mind at the time, but gradually I developed a vision of a circular shawl with a fairly plain interior and a deep, interesting, sideways-knit border. The trouble with this design is the danger that you will run out of yarn on the way around the border, as it is very hard to guess how much yarn you will need for the border relative to the body of the shawl. I speak from experience on this one.


Are you still with me?


So, in the book The Best of Knitter's Magazine Shawls and Scarves, Joan Schrouder describes a technique of knitting the two (body and border) separately and then attaching them. So that is my plan - but that involves (in my mind, at least) knitting from both ends of this 1250 yards of lace weight yarn. I definitely needed to wind it into one of those cute, flat yarn "cakes", like what you get from a ball-winder. And I definitely needed a swift, or this could turn into 1250 yards of tangle in a hurry! So here we are:

Yes, I have changed to a champagne bottle. Taller, and nice and heavy on the bottom. The winding actually took me several days, as I kept getting interrupted/bored and putting it down.

Here we are partway through the winding. (Me and the mouse in my pocket.)

And here it is all done - phase one finished! Now, on with the design!

I consulted several lace edging designs from http://www.knitting-and.com/ , and the Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting, and I have decided to make up my own:



Doesn't it look interesting? Time to swatch!