Monday, June 27, 2011

Mary Maxim Lacy Shawl/ Poncho

by Kelly

I finished this shawl-like poncho for Donna. She asked me to make it because the pattern is knitted.






 The pattern is Mary Maxims Lacy Poncho, available free on their site here.
You have to register and log in to see the pattern, but registering is free.

It's not a hard pattern, as far as knitted lace goes - the hardest stitch is a 'slip 1, k2tog, psso'. I had to frog the first panel at least four times, though, because I kept making mistakes with all the increases and decreases. Eventually, I just decided to recount the row every time I had to work the lace pattern, before I went on to the next. It slowed me down quite a bit, but it wasn't nearly as aggravating as trying to unravel the lace down to a mistake.

One thing about the pattern did bug me, though - the fifth row wasn't explained very well. The pattern repeats 2 or 3 times, depending on the size, and then you work a partial repeat, ending with a K2tog, K1, but this was only shown by listing the last five stitches, with the change added. It made my eyes cross trying to figure out what they were getting at, the first time through.

Next time I  make lace I'm going to try using a lifeline, a tip that I found on the Knitting Help site. Guess what else I found while I was there? A video on how to wind a center pull ball of yarn. So now I have something else to learn.

And there are still two and a half big skeins of lovely lavender yarn that also go back to Donna. I'm sure she can find something to make with them.

3 comments:

  1. That looks so pretty. I wish I could figure out how to knit but it always seems so hard and when I try it just looks bad.

    The center pull yarn is so great. I found out how to do that a while back and do it almost every time I have to bundle up my stuff to take somewhere else.

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  2. I learned knitting first, and learning crochet was really hard for me. I think they're so different from each other that whichever you learn first is going to seem like the easy one.

    And I'm loving these center pull yarn skeins. I didn't know it was so easy to wind your own :)

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  3. It looks gorgeous. I will come look at it tomorrow. Would you like to try a sweater someday?

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