Ok, whilst I remember, the lace work patterns have come from Jane Sowerby's fantastic "Victorian Lace Today" book (published by XRXbooks). I have to be honest, I have practically read this book from cover to cover - the historical stuff is interesting and the pictures are stunning. It's quite fun as some of them, Cambridge and Lavenham, are local to us.
I've always thought that lace work would be far too complicated for me - I have chunky fingers and therefore have always thought I'd be better at nothing less than 4 ply, not the case however. I decided to mix and match some of the patterns from the book and see what happened. The border is taken from the striped border scarf from Weldon's pattern (page 80) and the centre pattern is the centre diamond panel from the large rectangular pattern on page 20. I have doubled the number of stitches on the border however to make a wider stole (85sts). Still haven't decided on the side borders yet! This yarn is not one I would normally have chosen but happened to have in store - Kiddy Print by Laines Du Nord - colours look nothing on the ball, but I'm really pleased with the results so far.
Have had a real "play day" to day - should really have been doing the paper work, (then the washing, hoovering and ironing) but the call of a new project was too much to resist. Never done any dyeing before so this was exciting. My colleagues at the spinners, weavers and dyers would probably disapprove of the use of Kool-Aid, (so apologies to them) but I wanted to get to grips with the process and just see how easy it was to achieve basic results. I'm quite pleased - colours are a bit garish (see above) but will make something great for the kids! Note to self - if you do this again, remember to wear the suggested gloves to avoid self-henna hands!
No comments:
Post a Comment