Knitted Lace

Blogger Mary Ellen recently commented on one of my posts that after she tried making lace by tatting (something I would love to be able to do) she would be like a normal person and try knitting it. No one I know would call me a normal person, but I have been knitting lace. Mostly however, I have been frogging lace. Literally. I knit one row, end up with the wrong number of stitches, frog three or four or more rows trying to get back to the correct number of stitches, and even though I do not swear, I consider swearing.

I have spent more time frogging than knitting. Really and truly. I finally decided that I must learn something from this and I have. I will now pass on what I have learned:

1. When frogging knitted lace, use a smaller size needle than the one you were knitting with. (I've been knitting with a size nine, frogging with a size five) Using the smaller needle makes frogging easier but I don't know why.

2. Instead of going back row after row after row......use the smaller needle to go back and forth over the one row you have just frogged and look very carefully at each stitch. I have found that the yarnovers and two or more stitches knitted together are easily messed up when frogging and that problem has, in most cases, explained the incorrect number of stitches I have after I frog the row with the mistake in it.

I suppose these things sound very elementary, but I didn't know them, and boy howdee, has learning them saved me a lot of time.

Now back to knitting!

[I still don't know if I will like this project, but I am way too stubborn to give up on it now.]