Love it or Leaf it

I've been home from my Knitting Lace Triangles workshop for about three hours, and I'm having trouble putting my project down. Evelyn's book provides the basic structure of a triangle shawls an four lace patterns that can be easily combined to make a customized shawl. In the class, we also had the option of incorporating other lace motifs and charting out the whole design. Charting is tricky, because the number of repeats may not work easily with the triangle shape--one of the patterns that I'm putting in does weird things at the edges, for instance, and I'm not quite sure how it will work. It's amazing how much easier it is to understand once it's drawn into a chart, and to see whether / how the motifs will work.

So far, I've used two lace motifs, one is the leaf from the book, and the other is a fir cone from Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns. Obviously, I'm using the green Sundara sport merino (Pebble over Jade) that I posted about earlier--look at the pretty, subtle color changes! Up close, under the photo lamp, they're much more visible. The color is very leafy, so I'm trying to move from closed leaf patterns to more open leaf-like patterns. The next pattern that will pop up is from an awesome Japanese stitch dictionary that Evelyn brought to class. This pattern is another leaf, but one that is open in the middle and framed with yarn overs--it's the one that doesn't quite fit, but I'm only going to use a couple of repeats so I think it will work out o.k. I've knit about 70 rows of the triangle, and I can't wait to see how it progresses!

I'm really glad that I took the class, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in Evelyn's designs, or learning to design a shawl using her formulas from the book or other stitch patterns. The motifs in the book are very versatile, and the examples of complete shawls are also great options. There's one in particular that I almost decided to do instead of charting my own, but I thought that I should take advantage of the chance to learn from the source.

The other great thing about the class was the wealth of local knitting knowledge shared by the students and by Evelyn. I now know where to get Zephyr locally (evidently by the ounce!), and where I should eventually be able to get some Kauni, and I saw a full set of the new Knitpicks wood needles before mine arrived on Saturday. Plus, people brought in beautiful handspun yarns and incredible lace projects that I have to add to my Ravelry queue tonight. Now if I could just stop typing and get back to the shawl . . .