These last several months have been a whirlwind. Now that Mélodies is out, I’ve had a chance to take a breath, survey, and hopefully reset. I’m a nostalgic and introspective bird by nature; and the culmination of my first capsule collection, a longtime dream, has set me thinking about my knitting journey and my lace knitting journey in particular. So today there’s no business, no announcements, and no shameless plugs (okay, maybe there are a couple of reference links and a sneak peek; but that’s it); and we’re going to take a stroll down the proverbial memory lane. There are going to be bumps, snags, and bad photographs along the way; and as hard as it may be to believe, they were all necessary.
A Little History Tour
This was my very first lace project, other than the raggedy swatches that I made out of worsted-weight acrylic and used for doll blankets and such. Something must have possessed me to think I was ready to make a 15-inch doily as a wedding gift; whatever it was, I’m thankful it did. As you can probably see, this was before I knew how to block properly, and apparently I didn’t own any t-pins. (I say apparently because I completely forgot that I used to block with sewing pins; now I recollect that they were not rustproof. Ah, the mercies we receive…) The yarn is regular Red Heart #10 crochet thread. The most likely source? Walmart.
A couple of months later, I snagged a copy of Sock Yarn Shawls II by Jen Lucas. Little did I suspect that this was the perfect book for a new lace shawl knitter; lace patterns = pretty was about all I knew. The Juniper shawl from that book was my very first lace shawl, a care package gift for an expectant mom and self-described “pink fanatic”.
Less than a month later—me (in great need of a haircut) modeling my Sparrow shawl from the same book. Even I could tell at the time that Patons Kroy Sock yarn wasn’t a great choice for lace; but I wore that shawl everywhere I could get away with. There’s also a moderately funny story about me accidentally hitting a friend in the face with it while trying to put it on at church; but I shall pass over it.
Several months intervened between projects; I was working on a commission of 20 intarsia Christmas stockings, which is a tale for another time. But look: I learned how to block! Sort of. I also upgraded to laceweight and learned how to knit with beads.
The same friends who received my first lace project, the doily, also ended up with this baby sweater, and I am honored that all their baby girls have worn it so far. Thankfully babies aren’t fussed about whether my feather and fan panels are symmetrical…
Taking a brief rest from grainy photos—and trust me, things begin to look up from here—I owned a copy of New Lace Knitting by Romi Hill long before I could make anything out of it; dipping into it for the first time set off a mini lace knitting revolution in my impressionable mind. To date I’ve made several projects from it, including two Gentle Sky Cowls and an Oak Flat Road shawl that I wear around the house like a security blanket during the winter. My Crystal Bay Shawl, however, is favored enough to have received a full wash-reblock-and-photograph treatment last summer (hence the artsy pictures, for a change).
After a most diverting meander through the land of shawls, my first full design. Fenestra (Ravelry link) gave me a run for my money and I’m pretty sure some hair was lost to pulling; but hair grows back, and I learned the hard way that I really do need a tech editor.
Le Soir started out as a rectangle of lace on my dresser that was rejected, which shows that you never can quite tell what people will like, despite what advertising gurus and social media masters will tell you.
About every lace knitter with access to Interweave Knits has made a Swallowtail Shawl or two at some point; mine hooked me on nupps and on silk yarn.
I alluded to this a few weeks ago; Á Chloris came out of this design. I was cocky enough by this point to start improvising, aka “cast on whatever number stitches seems like a good idea and make it up from there”. Much of the math did not check out and I fudged merrily the whole way through. I promise that Á Chloris was tech edited and tested.
Then there was the Shawl Story, which you can read here and here. Yes, that’s three different shawls.
Based on the last several photos, I think I was having a moment with Knit Picks Luminance. I still have several hanks of it stashed from that phase; maybe there’ll be some designs one of these days.
And passing over a whole carpet bag’s worth of designs and projects, full circle has now been reached. Just two weeks ago, I bound off Monarda from Sock Yarn Shawls II.
Trickles
Tony Stark famously said that part of the journey is the end. Reviewing my progression now as a multi-published designer who identifies more and more as an industry professional rather than a geek with an impractical creative itch, I am slowly coming to embrace the conclusion that part of the end is the journey.
Everyone in my immediate family has celebrated, or will celebrate, a milestone birthday this year; there’s something about it that reminds me of putting a colored filter over a photograph—or maybe of viewing a filtered photograph in its natural state for the first time. Looking back and looking forward are suddenly very different activities than they used to be. Even just a couple of years ago, when I first started this blog, drawing analogies between knitting and life was much easier than it is now. Back then, I would have vented my frustrations with ripping and reknitting the same piece again and again, and then compared it with a sigh and a grin to the bumps and bruises that we all get from stepping out the door, giving our all, and trying new things. The one activity not depicted in this bird’s eye view of my journey is all the frogging.
I’ve ripped and reknit this piece more times in the last week than I’d have cared to. Lots of hours of knitting were swallowed up in a few minutes of carefully pulling and picking their work apart. Through most of the projects documented in the photos above my stomach would have churned at the waste of time, and at seeing my labor coming undone in my lap. Perhaps it’s only because I’ve gotten used to it; but I don’t remember feeling a single flutter yesterday as I pulled the tail and rewound the yardage I’d painstakingly worked up. Neither do I cringe looking back at the crinkly, lumpy, lopsided pieces that used to come off my blocking boards. Really I think it’s because I’ve come to accept that I will always, in some way, be a student, that imperfection is a way of learning the craft, and that time lost is not time wasted. Maybe someday I’ll get to the point where I can accept that elsewhere.
So now, I find myself coming to knitting to learn about life, rather than the other way around. Unpicking and detangling aren’t so easy when there’s more at stake than fancy string and when it costs us years instead of hours— whether we misread the chart, the car swerved in the middle of a long row, or somebody else really needs to issue errata. We’d like all of our projects to reach Finished Object status, blissfully and on schedule, but in reality, some give delayed returns and some never yield returns at all; rarely do we get to know which is which as soon as we’d like. And then some yarns—more often than not the glorious, soft, one-in-a-million ones—can’t be reknit. Someone as stubborn as me will stick it out to the eleventh hour, and maybe pay the price for it.
But if there’s one thing I’ve picked up from today’s exercise in time travel, it’s this. We don’t always know where a body of water is heading; what we do know is that water always runs downhill, and that streams meet rivers and somewhere rivers meet the sea. Trying to trace the eventual destination of every creek and puddle from its source is the route to insanity. The only way to find out where we’ve been and where we’re going is to reach the ocean and look back.
