Lace knitting
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Lace knitting is a style of knitting characterized by stable "holes" in the fabric arranged in beautiful ways. Lace is sometimes considered the pinnacle of knitting, because of its complexity and because woven fabrics cannot have holes (easily).
Eyelet patterns are those in which the holes make up only a small fraction of the fabric and are isolated into clusters (e.g., little rosettes of one hole surrounded by six others in a hexagon).
At the other extreme, some knitted lace is almost all holes, e.g., faggoting. Famous examples include the wedding ring shawl of Shetland knitting, a shawl so fine that it could be drawn through a wedding ring. Shetland knitted lace became extremely popular in Victorian England when Queen Victoria became a Shetland lace enthusiast. From there, knitting patterns for the shawls were printed in English women's magazines where they were copied in Iceland with single ply wool.
Knitted lace is extremely elastic, deforming easily to fit whatever it is draped on. As a consequence, knitted lace garments tend to deform over time.
Technique
A hole can be introduced into a knitted fabric by pairing a yarn-over stitch with a nearby (usually adjacent) decrease. If the decrease precedes the yarn-over, it should typically slant right as seen from the right side (e.g., k2tog, not k2tog tbl; see knitting abbreviations). If the decrease follows the yarn-over, it should typically slant left as seen from the right side (e.g., k2tog tbl, not k2tog). These slants pull the fabric away from the yarn-over, opening up the hole.
Pairing a yarn-over with a decrease keeps the stitch count constant. Many beautiful patterns separate the yarn-over and decrease stitches, e.g., k2tog, k5, yo. Separating the yarn-over from its decrease "tilts" all the intervening stitches towards the decrease. The tilt may form part of the design, e.g., mimicking the veins in a leaf.
There are few constraints on positioning the holes, so practically any picture or pattern can be outlined with holes; common motifs include leaves, rosettes, ferns and flowers. To design a simple lace motif, a knitter can draw its lines on a piece of knitting graph paper; right-slanting lines should be produced with "k2tog, yo" stitch-pairs (as seen on the right side) whereas left-slanting lines should be produced with "yo, k2tog tbl" stitch pairs (again, as seen on the right side). More sophisticated patterns will change the grain of the fabric to help the design, by separating the yarn-overs and decreases. (Perhaps illustrate w/example such as Frost Flowers from BGW #1?)
Simple examples
A horizontal row of holes can be produced by the pattern: *k3, k2tog, yo, k3*.
A pair of vertical columns can be produced by stacking the pattern: (k, k2tog, yo, k, yo, k2tog tbl, k) on the right side. Here the flanking decreases slant outwards away from the central stitch. For a thicker central column, one can move the decreases so that they slant inwards: (k, yo, dec 2 symmetrically, yo, k). For making the same pattern on the wrong side, the converse stitch patterns are: (p, p2tog, yo, p, yo, p2tog tbl, p) and (p, yo, dec 2 symmetrically, yo, p), respectively.
A diagonal row of holes can be made by shifting the (yo, dec) every row or every other row, e.g.,
- Row 1: k, k2tog, yo, k5
- Row 3: k3, k2tog, yo, k3
- Row 5: k5, k2tog, yo, k1
History and comparison to other laces
Lace knitting is generally not as fine as other forms of lace, such as needle lace or bobbin lace. However, it is better suited for garments, being softer and much faster to produce.
References
- (2002) Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book, updated ed., Sixth and Spring Books. ISBN 193154316X
- (1979) Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework, Reader's Digest Association. ISBN 0895770598
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