Last week, on my birthday, I decided to get my bod out of the house and go do something fun. So I headed up to Silverdale (which some might consider idiotic instead of fun since it's so close to Christmas time) to dink around doing some shopping. My first stop was at the local knitting shop where I ran across this book.
I fell in love. The whole concept behind the book is freeform lace knitting. The author gives several basic shapes usually used when knitting shawls (i.e. triangle, square, rectangle, circle) and shows the pattern for creating that shape and then gives ideas for knitting the fill-in lace without slavishly following a pattern. What you do with the lace is entirely up to you. You can take various lace stitch patterns and place them where you want or you can totally wing it and just put yarn-overs and decreases where you want. The only "rules" are to pair each yarn-over with a decrease and, if you're doing a shape like a triangle that has symmetrical shaping on each side of the center, to count the stitches on each side of center every few rows to make sure they stay symmetrical. Sounds like my kind of lace knitting! So, since I had some lace weight merino and mohair yarn that I'd just finished ripping out from another project, I just had to try my hand at making random lace.
It's hard to really see the lace "design" because it's not blocked but I love the process of knitting it! No making mistakes and having to rip out rows and rows of knitting. No having to stop every few minutes to find your place on the pattern chart. It's definitely not a technique that everyone will love--the gals at my knitting group were all looking at me like I was nuts when I showed them last night--but it's definitely the right fit for my personality. :)
