Knitting with laceweight

Well, neither thing I dreaded yesterday was as bad as I was expecting. The dental check up was the standard, "Wow, you have *really* good hygiene" followed by a short session of tartar removal (still, I'd hate to see what that would be like if I didn't have really good hygiene) and cleaning, followed by my being turned loose for the next six months. (The whole hygiene thing seems like such a no-brainer to me: I'd rather invest the five minutes a day or whatever it takes to avoid a couple hours in the dentist's operatory at a later date. Not to mention the cost and the pain of having to have extra work done)

Also, though our minister is leaving, it's in no way an acrimonious thing: he's leaving for family reasons that are completely understandable, and the mood is totally different from what is was back in 2003. Also, we do already have the profiles of four individuals who might be interested in coming to serve. So hopefully things will work out.

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I have two lace-weight projects in active rotation right now. (I won't speak of the two that are long-stalled; maybe some day I will get back to them). I'm coming back again to wanting to work more with really fine yarn. Because generally you get greater yardage for your cost, and also, knitting stuff on really fine yarn impresses people.



Also, in our warm climate, lightweight things are wearable for a greater stretch of the year. This is the Pianissimo Mitt, from the most recent Interweave Knits. It's not often that I open a magazine and right away see something I really, really want to knit, but this pattern was like that for me.

The yarn I'm using is Plymouth Baby Alpaca laceweight. It's a nice yarn to knit with, the inelasticity of alpaca will be overcome by the ribbing in this pattern (And anyway: laceweight wool isn't all that elastic). I have another inch or so of ribbing to knit before I start the increases for the thumb gusset.



And this doesn't look like much yet, but it's going to be the Emily shawlette that was published in Knitscene a while back, and that was included in their "Best of" book. I got a lot of this done during break; I'm about two and a half 20 row repeats from being done with this photo of it.

You can't really see the colors in the yarn but it's a variegated Pagewood Farms yarn in a color called "Crayon" - which actually looks more like stained glass (or, as suggested by the leaf design in this shawl) autumn leaves. I started this in part with the hope of getting my complex-lace-knitting mojo back and going back to the Rosy-Fingered Dawn shawl that I have not worked on for something like two years now.