But it was a recurring problem. I'd gotten up to Row 38, but at least every couple rows I'd be a stitch off again somewhere. I knew if I kept fabricating stitches out of thin air, it was just going to screw up the pattern.
Here's how far I had gotten - notice the past tense.
I finally gave up and had to rip this all out, too, for a couple of reasons. The first I'm still confused about. The pattern as sold at Patternworks specifically calls for this particular yarn (Silky Alpaca Lace) and a size 7 needle. This is truly lace-weight yarn, but I thought I'd heard or read that lace is often knit on needles much larger than the yarn weight would suggest, to give it that open lacy effect. So lace weight yarn on a size 7 needle didn't startle me too much. And anyway, that's what the experts said.
I didn't have a size 7 needle I could use to start this, but I did have an Addi bamboo circular in size 6. Since I generally have to drop a couple needle sizes anyway, compared to most people's gauge, I decided that would probably be safe.
This needle was not working out at all. First, I was unhappy with the look of the fabric on a needle this size. The stitches weren't just open and lacy, they were loose and sloppy. I figured it was probably just the way I knit, but regardless, I didn't like it. Second, the join on this set of circulars sucks for yarn this tiny. It's smooth enough, and wouldn't be a problem on a larger yarn, but there's a small gap between the wood needle and the metal cap, just small enough for about 2 stitches of this yarn to fall into. So when the thing began to get big enough that some of it had to slip off the needle onto the cable, I could not get the stitches back onto the needle without much fighting (and more swearing). I knew that once the shawl got really large, I was no way going to be able to fight with those joins constantly.
The last straw was that on the last row I worked, I again came up a stitch short, but this time was determined to unknit back and fix it. I managed to screw the entire row up doing that (and no, I wasn't using a lifeline - a piece of yarn or string run through the stitches of a properly completed row at intervals, so that if you have to rip back, you have a place to rip back to and still get your stitches back on the needles properly).
Anyway, once that happened, I figured the thing was pretty much a lost cause, and ripped it all out last night. I figured I was going to have to order a new needle with a better join, and some smaller stitch markers (more on those later).
But I'm horribly impatient when I want to start a new project. I really wanted to work on it last night, and began a little investigation to see if there was some way I could start it over without ordering a bunch of new stuff. I got the pattern out and read the requirements at the beginning, and something caught my attention. The written pattern calls for fingering weight yarn and size 7 needles - not lace weight yarn and size 7 needles.
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that fingering weight yarn is basically sock yarn, or the size most sock yarns come in. If so, the sock yarn I've been using is several times thicker than this very fine lace-weight I'm using for the shawl. I mean, check this out - lace yarn on top, current sock yarn on bottom:
So if the pattern called for fingering weight and size 7s, and I'd dropped it to lace weight (on the recommendation of Patternworks) and was still trying to use even a size 6, no wonder I didn't like it.
So I got out the yarn and looked at the label, and it's recommended needle size is 2. Well, hmm. They know it's lace-weight yarn, and they know you're probably going to want to knit lace with it, and they still recommend a 2. And I'm using a 6, and not liking the fabric. Maybe I should just go try a 2. I had Addi Turbos in that size, and I knew the joins on those needles would give me no grief.
I don't know what the confusion was with the stated recommended yarn being different from what the pattern instructions said, and maybe the confusion is mine alone - maybe the designer did indeed knit the thing in Silky Lace Alpaca on size 7s. Maybe to some people Silky Lace Alpaca is fingering weight. But having discovered all of that, I felt more justified in dropping the needle size to something that worked better for me, and was closer to the recommended needle size on the yarn label.
By the way, gauge hasn't entered into this conversation because, no, I didn't do a gauge swatch. The instructions said to do the stitch and row count after the swatch had been blocked. With all the trouble I'd had getting this thing started, I wasn't about to take it off the needles and use as it as a gauge swatch. But once I had to rip it out anyway, I did take a sort of semi-blocked gauge swatch, and was getting about 8 stitches to the inch. The pattern called for 4.5. That alone told me that was something was not kosher.
So I started it over with a 2, and I'm up to Row 15 without a single problem. It's easier to knit, the stitches look much better, and the fabric is turning out much nicer.
Most gratifying of all, my stitch count has remained correct so far. I think I figured out what I was doing wrong before - the last yarn-over at the end of right side rows was right next to a stitch marker, and I was managing to either lose it or forgetting to make it every couple rows. Apparently I've stopped doing that on this second try.
The only problem is, I guess I'm going to need more yarn, having dropped the needle size so much, but I have no idea how to figure out how much. I should order it now, while I can still get it, and in the same dye lot number, but I hate to play around with $10 balls of lace weight yarn (okay, actually I'd love to play around with it - this stuff feels sinful - but, you know, money and all).
Meanwhile, I'm very happy with the way this new attempt is turning out. I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't also be happy with it on a size 3, and have debated going ahead and starting over yet again on size 3s, since I'm not very far into it. But I don't really want to. I could take a second ball of the yarn, and start a new one on size 3s, so I don't have to rip out my current work, then compare the two. That's a possibility.
So the story with those markers. I couldn't find anything to use as markers when I was working on the size 6s. My standard white plastic rings were too thick, and causing me grief working around them with this fine yarn. I looked for anything else that would work, and finally decided to try safety pins. It worked, in theory - their odd shape made them difficult to work around, but helped with one tricky thing. There are yarn-overs at the beginning and end of each pattern repeat (yarn-overs are simply a loop of yarn around the needle, that isn't a full stitch; it doesn't turn into anything like a real stitch until the next row, when you knit or purl it from the other side; until then, they are dangerous, as there's precious little except the knitter's own attention that keeps the slippery things on the needle; and if they do fall off, you can't always tell for sure, because they don't unravel like a regular stitch, they just relegate themselves back to the horizontal threads of knitting, hiding out there). At first I was having a hard time with those yarn-overs slipping around the marker rings. With safety pins they couldn't do that.
But I wasn't very happy with them by Row 38. They were just too fiddly, and this whole lace thing is fiddly enough without making it worse. I had some jewelry making components upstairs, and when I switched to the smaller needles, I discovered these metal spacer rings fit on the size 2 needles and made quite serviceable markers.
So, I'm back on track with the shawl, for now anyway. I'm discovering that I really like lace knitting, but only on smaller needles. If I have to use larger needles for this tiny, delicate yarn, I'm not going to like it at all. The pattern did say that it's easily adaptable to other yarns and needles by simply adjusting the number of pattern repeats once you get into the main body of the shawl - but it also said you'd need to adjust your yarn requirements accordingly. So I know I can make it on these size 2s, but as I said, figuring out how much more yarn I need is a process that's eluding me. I'm just not sure how to do that part.
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