Before the break, Minty was having something of a nervous breakdown over charting out her lace. Having chosen “Chart It” as her detour, she was attempting to rewrite a lace pattern—Traveling Vine Lace—into a chart from a row-by-row, nonrepeating pattern. Her boyfriend even stopped her to take her out for water ice and frozen custard (Rita’s “gelati” mmmm) to try to calm her nerves. Finally, she got it down on paper and just set to work.
A Detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this Detour, teams have a choice between two methods common to knitters: Chart It or Read It.
In Chart It, teams will take a pattern out of Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, which is written in a row-by-row, spelled-out manner, and convert it into a chart. The pattern as it’s written does not account for being worked in the round, and teams must write the chart so that it can be read this way. The task is challenging but ultimately rewarding, though it could take a long time.
In Read It, teams will take the same pattern out of Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, do a swatch to familiarize themselves with the pattern, and simply use the printed pattern as a guide. The task is not as rewarding, could still take some time, but may be slightly less challenging.
This weekend was the wedding for which I knit Kiri. We drove down to Lexington, Virginia, super-early on Saturday morning and just returned yesterday afternoon, after a whirlwind of work by us in the wedding party: bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding planning, organizing centerpieces, carting tables, doing hair, seeking the groom’s lost car keys, etc. (The keys were found by a bridesmaid, after hours of concentrated searching all over the property the morning of the wedding day, in a trash bag from the rehearsal dinner. Everyone cheered!) The wedding was atop a mountain in the Blue Ridge mountains and was positively gorgeous—the weather was unparalleled.
Welcome to this first episode of a race through several lace socks, here on The Amazing Lace.
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