Heartland - first section

Heartland Lace Shawl
Originally uploaded by vampirefan

Here's the first photo!

I learned a new thing. Apparently, when you have a garter stitch edging, the best way to start out a shawl is by making a "tab".

In this case, I had to cast on 2 stitches, then knit 7 rows of garter stitch (that's knitting every row). Then, I turn the piece of knitting on it's side and pick up 3 stitches (one in each purl row) and then 2 in the 2 original stitches - making up a total of 7 stitches.

At first, when I read this explanation, I was a little confused and couldn't visualize it so I made one on some practice yarn and it was simple to understand once I followed the steps.

So far, I've only had to tink back 2 rows when I missed some YOs.

One thing that I realized almost immediately was that I cannot do this and talk or watch tv or whatever. I have to concentrate on the directions so no taking this to knit night or to work on while commuting.

Also, during my research, I noticed that many people talked about "life lines". This is a thin length of string (or someone even recommended dental floss) that you thread through the loops of one of the purl rows. You do this every few rows and can remove the prior one when adding a new one, if you prefer, always making sure to note which row you have lifelined. The purpose of it is to save yourself a ton of aggravation if you have to frog back some rows. Since the lace pattern will have many YOs and SSKs/K2TOG, it's really hard to keep track if you have to frog. With the lifeline, you simply rip back up to the lifeline and thread your needle back in and then start again from there without having to worry about dropped stitches.

I'll probably not work on this again until next week.