Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Niebling knitted lace, the Dahlie

I managed to get over the first failure with the lace knitting and bought some proper cotton in order to have another go at it.
Valentine Day was the casting-on date (worked well as therapy against weird relationship).
The pattern is called 'Dahlie', it's from a German Burda magazine - E908 and it was designed by Herbert Niebling, according to a few Internet references.
It's absolutly great to work.
I've used DMC Cebelia 20 (light beige) and 2.5 mm needles.

This is the stage after a week: it's just an ugly mass of stitches. I can't say I had much enthusiasm in knitting it - if you've never done lace it's difficult to imagine how much different and nicer it's going to be after it is getting blocked.

















Had a few problems with the blocking - mainly due to my own stupidity.
I draw the circle on a present wrapping paper and after placing the wet doily on it, the colors started to appear from the other side of the paper - so I needed to lift the doily FAST, removed the paper - but kept the needles in place.
This is the doily, with the cat assisting all the time - she even slept on the towel all night long.


Next morning 'beauty shot':



While doing the 'Dahlie' I found out about the Knitting Olympics, but it was too late for me to join.
I spent a lot to find the Great Britain team leader - had no luck though.
Obviously I had no choice but to start my own team :) , joined it and finished on time, a few hours before the Olympics closing ceremonies.
So I declare this as my Olympic project in my own Knitting Olympics competition :).

And now the conclusions:
A great pattern will produce a great doily.
A high quality yarn is essential - DMC Cebelia was a very good choice indeed.
And last but not the least : Don't even think of starting a lace pattern without joining a forum first :).
Many thanks to the Teddys ( my german friends from the Teddys forum ) and to the Knitter's Review forum.

3 comments:

fleegle said...

Gasp! That's fabulous!

Anonymous said...

Silvia...do you read german ? i bought alot of german knitting lace pattern...but i need help interpreting the abbreviations... let me know if u can help me...thanks

from hellokitty165@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

Hi Hellokitty,
Check out the Yahoo group for Niebling knitters, you will discover that there is no need to read German at all. The symbols are universal and will all make sense once you see their explanations.
They rock my world in lacey fashion!
Happy lace adiction,
Bee