KnitMe

HK Sampler Stole

I finally cast on for my Shetland stole last night. The plan is to knit a Shetland sampler stole using patterns from Sharon Miller's book, Heirloom Knitting. As a guide to the construction, I'm using Miller's instructions for the Unst stole in her book. First, with a 2-ply lace yarn, I cast on 145 stitches (seemed like a good stitch count based on most of the lace stitches which I think I'll be doing), then knit 4 rows. These are throw-away rows which will be discarded later. Then I join in the cobweb yarn and knit another 4 rows, then a row of eyelets, then knit 3 rows. Now I'm ready to start the first lace pattern.
Here's a close-up of the little eyelets, all in row. Aren't they cute?

Onward. For the first lace motif I chose a trellis diamond pattern because I wanted something really easy. After one repeat of this, though, I started getting bored. So I did another divider sequence (an eyelet row with 3 rows of garter stitch before and after), then one repeat of the "madeira" pattern, another easy one. Both "trellis diamond" and "madeira" are graded as level *** (three stars) by Miller because every other row is a plain knit row. Having warmed up a bit, I think I'm ready now to graduate to a (****) level pattern.

Linette