When I saw this pattern, by Anne Eunson in the Shetland Wool Week Annual 2021 I knew I just had to knit this.
I had been doing a series of in person ( luckily) classes with Elizabeth Williamson (1). My usual shape for Shetland lace knitting was a rectangle! I liked how the Unst (2) ones were constructed and I could by now follow the techniques and use my own motifs, proportions etc and have some items I really loved. With Elizabeth I had been exploring a variety of different shapes as we knit mini versions - the idea being we could scale up. I had cheated for the first one, ie not designed my own, and knitted Elizabeth’s Fladda/Alchemilla and used Jamieson and Smith supreme 2 ply that I had naturally dyed. (3)
The one Anne had designed was this same crescent shape, although the construction was different which was great for me, the more ways I know how to do a shape the better!
What I also liked about Anne’s design was the fact that she had taken inspiration for the main motif from the Lace Assessment project she had been working on at Shetland Museum and Archives with her sister Kathleen Anderson. What to me was even better- the fact that she had ‘combined aspects of different motifs found among the collection, creating something new yet still rooted in tradition’. This I am sure is what Shetland Knitters from Shetland have been doing for generations, not just trying to copy a motif exactly but making a motif of one’s own.
I liked the colour Anne had chosen and this sparked in me an idea. I had bought a ‘poncho’ in a similar colour from a local machine knitter. However I loved the colour but every time I put the poncho on I moved it around and ended up taking it off and wearing something else. The poncho was I guessed in Yeoman’s 50/50, not a yarn I normally use as it was 50% wool and 50% acrylic. However, I guessed it might work for this. So I pulled out the poncho, and washed the yarn. Then I set about working out the length I had (I used the weight of my blue yarn to work out the length from the manufacturer’s yarn details and used this to cross check the length I had in my skeins.
By looking at the information Anne gave in the pattern I would see the length she had allowed. I would have a bit of yarn spare but not as much as I would have liked.
The next thing was to knit a tension square. I did as Anne suggested and knitted the tension swatch using the same needle size she suggested. I stopped myself memorising the numbers for the tension swatch and blocked this as I usually do on my sample blocking board.
When dry and left on the blocking board and the pins removed, I was pleasantly pleased with the fact that the measurements were as near as would make no difference to the pattern tension, as it was a shawl.
Tension sample.
I liked how the main motif looked and decided that even though there was acrylic in the yarn besides wool it would be worth knitting using this yarn.
So I set about casting on. I like to knit with double pointed needles and a knitting belt as I know it gives me better tension. The edging went well, but then I needed to pick up stitches from this and had 509 sts to juggle with. Several of the dpns had to be employed with rubber bands on the ends until I got the stitch count down a bit. I was using 40 cm long needles and soon got so I could have all the stitches on 2 needles. I had done this before and the resulting shawl worked out fine (a pattern from Donna Smith.) Checking the pattern as I was going along was tricky but as it is so important I made sure I did keep checking on progress. The only tweaking I did was at the very end where I did an invisible grafting that I have been learning from Joni Coniglio’s methods and this worked very well.
The final graft
From the grafting, there was not a raised area in the middle or a noticeable dip where the two joined. I hoped for this and managed to avoid either happening. A previous shawl I knitted many years ago, before I learnt how to avoid it, still bothers me as it is not flat and forms a V at this join.
Blocking was tricky as my door sized blocking board was not big enough! I added my sample board next to it and that worked ‘well enough’. I could not tell which end of the shawl had gone off the edge when it was finished.
Dressing
I started this in November and the final dressing was done in April, however, this wasn’t my sole knitting and turned into my TV knitting as I became familiar with the pattern.
So this is the finished shawl ( see initial photo) and a far, far superior use of the yarn than as a poncho!
Some details:
Size 135cm x 48 cm approx, as pattern
116 g of yarn used
Yarn Yeoman’s 50/50 as mentioned above. It gave a lovely soft finish!
Plyed the yarn was 20 wpi ….not a good way to measure yarn as wpi means the single in the yarn usually, but it does give an indication of the diameter. I would call this a ‘3ply’ in vintage knitting terms.
Needles used 2.75 mm dpns with a knitting belt
Notes:
- Elizabeth’s website shows her work and workshops
https://www.elizabethwilliamsonknitting.co.uk
- Unst lace is some of the finest, if you get to Shetland do try and get there to see it. Some more details here http://www.unstheritage.com/web/unst-heritage-centre/unst-lace/
- Details and photos of Fladda can be found in this blog post of 14 Sept 21
No comments:
Post a Comment