FO Friday: My Blithe Heaven

Presenting … 100% camel in a gorgeous lace pattern!

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Project: My Blithe Heaven

Pattern: My Heaven

Designer: Patusha

Available: FREE! on Ravelry

Yarn: 100% baby camel — off label fingering-weight yarn from the back wall at Hub Mills Store

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This is a free pattern, designed for lace-weight yarn.  The edging is knit sideways, then the body is worked bottom-up from picked-up stitches.  The lace edging and main body pattern are both worked with lace every row, in garter stitch — no resting purl-back rows. I love how “every row” holes alternate with “every other row” holes in the edging, and I also love the undulating circles/waves in the main body pattern.

 

Modifications:

Because I was working with fingering-weight yarn, and I wanted to replicate the VERY open lace of the sample photos, I used #7 needles — in other words, big!  With such large needles, I worked only 11  edging repeats per side, and picked up a mere 149 stitches.  Since this was a perfect number for starting the main body pattern, I worked one wrong-side row and dove into the lace.  I did two full repeats plus two extra rows, and then finished up with garter stitch as the pattern describes.

I will say, the charts for this pattern are provided in “as knit” form — meaning that the chart does NOT show the “right side” appearance.  This is, shall we say, my less-preferred mode of charting.  I knit a few repeats of the edging on size #6 needles, decided to move up a size, and ripped out.  As long as I was starting over, I decided to re-write the edging chart in my preferred mode — as viewed from the RS.  In the process, I discovered a few irregularities that I hadn’t noticed before.  I decided to change them in my version of the charts, because I obsessively want things symmetrical and consistent.  I’m still not 100% sure which way the designer wanted things to be, so I’m not ready to call them “mistakes” per se — but here are my changes to the edging (affects both A and B chart):

Row 1: yo, k2tog, k2, k2tog, yo, (then the rest of the row)

Row 3: yo, k2tog twice, yo, k3, yo, ssk, k3, yo, ssk, k2tog, yo, ssk, (then the rest of the row)

Future knitters of My Heaven can decide for themselves which way they prefer these two rows to be worked.

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Ravelry Monday: Caffeinate, My Heaven, and Pull Capriate

First Pick: Caffeinate! Press Style Coffee Maker Cozy, by Coryna Blasko (FREE!)

Um, hooray! What a great way to brighten my day! Anything Doctor Who is awesome, and this Dalek-inspired cozy is extra awesome. It makes me want to buy a coffee press just so I can make a cozy for it.

Second Pick: My Heaven, by Patusha (FREE!)

Oh My Heaven, that’s some pretty lace! Check out blog for Patusha’s Knitting Club for free, beautifully formatting charts and pattern. As of right now, the pattern is available is … some language that uses a different alphabet (but the English version is coming soon).  Experienced lace knitters know that all we really need is the cast on and the charts! 🙂

Third Pick: Pull Capriate, by Carole de Marne (in a book, in French)

I’m just charmed by this knit — even though the pattern book is in French, and even getting the book seems to require speaking French … if I had a little girl who’d wear it, I’d totally learn French :).