Lace It Up

Having successfully (enough) conquered the ribbed stitch, I am moving on to lace style patterns.  My project will be a shawl that I will leave at work as I tend to get chilly both in the winters and air-conditioned summers.

With project in mind, I need to determine two things - the pattern and the color.

Finding a pattern is easy enough - a Google search for "knitting lace patterns free easy" will yield many results.  Choosing a pattern that I liked though, proved to be a bit more challenging.

I decided on the following pattern with red as the color of choice.  With pattern in hand, I YouTubed videos of each stitch and watched the videos a few times until I figured out the stitch.

NaturallyCaron's Mandarin Wrap.

The pattern says to use a size US 7 (4.5mm) needle, but I used a larger 10.5 US (6.5mm) because, well, those are the size needle that I happened to have... 

I used two skeins of yarn 370 yds/338 m of yarn with about a quarter of a skein sacrificed for the greater good (see photos below).

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Lace Shawl Wrap Pattern
CO 105 sts.
Row 1 (WS): K4, p to last 4 sts, k4.
Row 2 (RS): K4, ssk, *k4, yo, k1, yo, k4, sl 1 purlwise, k2tog, psso, rep from * to last 15 sts, k4, yo, k1, yo, k4, k2 tog, k4.
Rep Rows 1 and 2 for patt until piece measures 80” from CO edge, ending with Row 2.
BO all sts working Row 1 of pattern.  

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The above pattern looks deceptively simple, but to a beginner, the reality is more like the following mess...

See my translations in red, similar to my in-progress shawl:

CO (cast on) 105 sts (stitches).
Row 1 (WS)(Wrong side of piece): K4, p to last 4 sts, k4.

Knit 4, purl to last 4 stitches, knit 4 - this is very straightforward.

Row 2 (RS)(Right side, or the pretty side): K4, ssk, *k4, yo, k1, yo, k4, sl 1 purlwise, k2 tog, psso, rep from * to last 15 sts, k4, yo, k1, yo, k4, k2 tog, k4.
k = knit 4 stitches
ssk = slip slip knit, which means slip one stitch as if to knit, without knitting - this is just moving one stitch from the left needle to the right needle, slip/move another stitch, and then knit the two slipped stitch together.  YouTube this.

* means to repeat stitches within the * symbol

yarn over - take the yarn and loop it 360 degress around the right needle create an extra stitch; this is a stitch that gives patterns their lacy hole-liness
sl 1 purlwise - similar to the above slip concept from ssk, pretend to purl a stitch but you are just moving a stitch from the left need to the right
k2 tog = knit two together means to take two stitches and knit it as if it was one
psso = pass slipped stitch over means to take the slipped stitch (sl 1 purlwise), and pass it over to the k2 tog stitch you just knitted; this creates a diagonal 3D-like design to the shawl

Fifth time is the charm...?  I had started a few times, and had to take apart my
earlier works due to mistakes.  This piece is a bit uneven as you can tell by the 
inadvertent V-like pattern resulting from miscounted stitches.

Rep (Repeat) Rows 1 and 2 for pattern until piece measures 80” from CO (cast on) edge, ending with Row 2.
BO (bind off) all sts working Row 1 of pattern (which is K4, p to last 4 sts, k4).

See - easy, right?  After practicing a good 100 rows or so and starting over about six times, it really is quite easy...!

Training Wheels Tip
A good find is this vintage style lace pattern from www.thecastingoncouch.com which has an accompanying YouTube video.

It really helps to see the coded pattern and have a video of someone following the pattern and demoing each stitch.

Ultimately, I did not think the scarf would scale well to a shawl so I found another pattern.

Regardless, spending some time studying the pattern and video gave me a good idea of the stitches that are typically used to create lace patterns.