As part of the Lace Guild competition entitled `Seven` Tonbridge Lacemakers have decided to dress dolls basing the theme on the seven deadly sins, with small pieces of lace contributed by members and then dyed, each colour representing a sin. A small group of us decided the best way to get said peice of lace made would be to meet up one day and have a `Lace In`, so we duly assembled to begin our task - now me being me, decided I would knit a piece of lace knitting, just to be different (yes it does count) and started off with high hopes and a complicated pattern - now I don`t know if it was the heat, mistakes in the pattern, or just plain old me, but by lunch time I had frogged and tinked, and tinked and frogged and had absolutely nothing to show for it. In the end with my only resource being a pattern book our hostess produced, I resorted to a very simple lace pattern and produced a square - now I know it isn`t very much to show for a days work, but it was on old fashioned size 14s with fine crochet cotton, and I found it awfully difficult to knit and eat at the same time - almost everyone had decided to make and bring along some goodies, without anyone realising we were all doing it, and it would have been very rude not to try the various cheese straws, cakes, muffins, biscuits and would you believe, some absolutely divine apple crumble and ice cream..... so much for my diet in readiness for my holiday!
Talking of knitting whilst doing something else, I hadn`t realised it was unusual to knit and read at the same time, (I mean we all knit and watch TV dont we? so I hadn`t thought anything of reading instead) I started it many years ago when my Nan had a blind friend who used to knit the most beautiful lace patterns (makes me feel even more ashamed of my little square above) and being an impressionable teenager at the time I thought if she could do that then I really ought to be able to at least knit stocking stitch without looking - so I did, and then being a book worm decided to combine the two - the only problem is keeping the book open!
Mrs P. really was an amazing knitter, her daughter used to record the pattern onto a tape, but she would only need to listen to it for a couple of repeats and she had it off pat - if she ever did drop a stitch, and living alone too, the first available visitor was enlisted to pick it up for her, including the milkman!!!!
3 comments:
Hello from the US! I just came across your blog at random here and since we both use the same color scheme I thought I'd better say hello :-)
I blame the heat - it isn't conducive to lace knitting. The Lace In sounds like a great idea.
I don't read and knit as such (I get stoppy when I lose my page), but I do listen to a lot of audio books and arts & drama stuff on bbc radio.
I could probably manage something in stocking stitch without looking at it, but lace? woah!
Your lace square is so neat and pretty!
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