Scarf with the No. 20 Edging

It is done! Can you believe that I actually stated at one point that this would take me just a month to finish? It has been months and months. What was I thinking? I never seemed to get into a groove with the pattern and I realized, after tinking one too many times, that I just couldn't be around other people while knitting this border with this yarn on these needles.

I finished this during the football game Monday night (was I the only Redskins fan out there listening to the game on the radio and knitting Victorian lace?) and blocked it last night so that my friend Dana could borrow it for a fancy schmancy party tonight celebrating the new Luck Stone Building. She modeled it for me at R's preschool this morning at drop off.

So here it is.




Pattern: Scarf with the No. 20 edging from The Knitted Lace Pattern Book, 1850 from Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby
Yarn: Sea Silk by Hand Maiden Yarn (about 1 2/3 skeins)
Needles: Knit Picks Options, US 8s

Modifications: I only knit the border pattern repeat 20 times instead of 22 since my gauge was different with this yarn and 20 times gave me close to the 72". Also, I may have misread the pattern but I did not purl one row after completing Chart B. If I eliminated this instruction, I was exactly where I needed to be when I began to pick up the stitches for the 2nd border. I'm not sure whether the pattern is wrong or I was. I only found one reference to this here. Any ideas about what I did wrong? It looks fine ...



This was a challenging project for me simply because the repeat was 20 rows (really 10 since the wrong side rows were all the same) and I found the yarn hard to read and the pattern difficult to anticipate. I assume that my tolerance for this will grow as I become more experienced with lace.



I used the suspended bind-off but needed to use a size 10 needle in order to keep it loose enough to match the cast-on edge. This is a perennial problem for me. I think I would maybe try a different bind off next time (maybe the modified Russian?).



The yarn is beautiful. I was concerned about the colors pooling since when I blocked it I noticed all the lighter pinks were more on one side the the darker blues and purples on another; however, as it dried this was less noticeable and when worn becomes irrelevant. The yarn is divine. Just divine. The colors are jewel-like and brilliant.




And the crocheted edging worked out grand as well. I fumbled around a bit at first ... how should I hold the yarn for the correct tension? what is that twisting motion again? But finally I remembered my few crochet lessons.

I have another lace project in my very near future, but for now I am simply happy to have this as a finished object!