To Lace or Not to Lace

I found some fuzzy yarn ON SALE at a great discount. Hmmm, but what could I use it for? It's pink (not my favorite color) and it's fuzzy. Really fuzzy. Well, I had been thinking of trying to making a lace and my mother wears a lot of pink. So I got it:

Fluff of New York! Whatever that is. :^)  I looked for a pattern and finally settled on this pattern at Ravelry. It is for a lovely scarf, which my mom likes to wear and I thought the FUZZ would be a unique feature. And it calls for some beading on either end for weight - I was very excited about that. I've been wanting to try that for a while, too. (The pattern is nice but if you decide to make it, be aware that it is only for one of the V's and then the "2-hole" part on either side. The picture on the pattern shows 3 sets of V's.)

So after a little bit of knitting, the scarf was going fairly well, except that the fuzz made it difficult to keep track of where I was. It looked like this:

I really got excited when the pattern began to emerge. But sometime after these pictures were taken, I began to increase stitches and could not see how or where. That, of course, threw off the pattern. I ripped out about 3 times and finally had a tantrum and threw it away! I was going to use a different pink yarn but when I held this fuzzy thing up to my neck, it felt so nice. So I decided if I was going to use this crazy yarn, I'd have to do something easier for my first lace.

This is what I ended up with.


The left hand picture is just after it was sprayed for blocking. The spots in the middle are just wet spots.

It's basically several rows of alternating "holes" with a straight stockinette in the middle. It definitely is not the fancy lace I was going for. But I guess I'll have to practice that with fuzz-less yarn.



Here's what I did:

# 7 needles
Cast on 34 stitches (or any number divisible by 4 plus 10)
For the bead work on the ends, I followed the pattern above that I linked to. I think I'm not supposed to reproduce it here, but it is a free download. (You could omit the beads and use a seed stitch for the edges.)

After the bead work or seed stitch edging,

Row 1: (RS) K across
Row 2: (WS) K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K5
Repeat both rows one more time, for 4 rows

Pattern rows:
Row 1: K5 *YO, k2tog, k2* then repeat *-* until last 5 stitches, k5
Row 2: K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K5
Row 3: K across
Row 4: K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K5
Row 5: K5, *k2, YO, k2tog* then repeat *-* until last 5 stitches, k5
Row 6: K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K5
Row 7: K across
Row 8: K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K5

Repeat this 8 row pattern until desired length. Then

Row 1: (RS) K across
Row 2: (WS) K5, purl to last 5 stitches, K5
Repeat both rows one more time, for 4 rows.

Finish with the same bead work as you began with.

Shawl Pin - eBay find!

I was planning on making it quite a bit longer but that yarn was making me CRAZY so I stopped and ordered a shawl pin on eBay so Mom can pin it shut rather than tying it or looping it.

So that's what I did with Fluff of NY, but it is not fancy lace. I'm not going to give up on lace-making, however. I plan to make another scarf with easier yarn to work with.