Lace Knitting: My Maiden Voyage

My beaded lace stole in progress. Beautiful yarn, great needles, lovely iridescent beads, and one teeny-tiny crochet hook.

As usual, I have a few different projects going at the moment, of varying types, sizes, and levels of difficulty. One project is a beaded stole using laceweight yarn. While I’ve done lacy projects and used laceweight yarn before, this is my first time using them together, for a true lace knitting project. And it’s beaded to boot.

The project is “An Elegant Beaded Lace Stole,” by Anniken Allis, found in the Fall 2013 issue of Knitting Traditions magazine. Not only is the finished stole beautiful, but I thought it would be a good first-time-lace-knitting project because it’s smallish,1 uses larger needles,2 and you add the beads using a crochet hook as you go along.3

This is what the pattern will look like after blocking, when the lace really opens up.

Since this is a beaded lace project–with a lace chart to follow and beads to be placed–and because it’s my first true lace project, it requires paying attention. Which translates to knitting when I can see well, have no distractions, and am not tired. Needless to say, it’s slow-going.

But I am making progress: I just finished row 24 of my first repeat (it’s a 32-row repeat, that you do 4 times to complete the stole), and I can actually see the pattern taking shape, which is very exciting. So while overall my progress is sluggish, I am enjoying the journey and the variety that this project adds to my group of on-going projects.

When I finish my stole, I will write about it again and post more photos. But it’ll be a while….

1. There are 267 stitches per row and 140 rows to the entire stole; after blocking it should be 14.5″ wide and 61.5″ long. [↩]
2. The project calls for size 4 (3.5 mm) needles, which is large-ish for lace knitting. [↩]
3. They don’t have to be prestrung! [↩]