Let's Talk About Lace

I recently pulled a half-finished lace shawl from the depths of my projects pile and decided that it's time to finally finish it. It's been on the needles for over two years but still needs a good amount of work done on it. It's my very first true lace shawl and, while I'm not certain how much I will wear it, I would like to at least scale the mountain that is lace and come down the other side.


The pattern is Miriam Felton's Lightweight Mountain Peaks Shawl and I'm knitting it with KnitPicks Bare Merino Laceweight. I'm kind of kicking myself now that I chose the lightweight version instead of the easier standard version (bigger needles and less yardage), but I think that the finer details in the lightweight shawl will be lovely.


One thing that I'm learning during this project is that I prefer 'lace knitting' to 'knitted lace'. The former has pattern on the right-side rows and purls on the wrong side, while the latter has pattern on both sides. The level of required concentration is the main difference between the two, though 'lace knitting' has the distinct benefit of not needing 'purl 2 together through the back loop' stitches. Those are starting to drive me crazy.


Luckily, I just finished the main 'knitted lace' section and have moved on to two whole charts of 'lace knitting'. I'm hoping to make some major progress on the shawl in the next few weeks, but it doesn't help that even the simplest rows take me over 10 minutes to knit at this point.