Back from the conference and trying to catch up, I show off my airplane knitting – the beginnings of the lace shawl I mentioned in my last post.

I’ve pinned it out somewhat so you can see the detail. The lace texture pattern is from Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow (Vol. 1). It’s the last one in the book, and is shown as a bodice and a cap. The book itself is in German, with an idiosyncratic (but charted) notation system. Judy Gibson has posted a nice set of hints for working from Duchrow charts for people like me who don’t read German. As far as difficulty, the 34 stitch repeat – though large – is pretty easy to memorize. Once it’s established, the progression is very logical. My piece contains four full repeats plus about 14 edge stitches.

My plan is to work a square of this basketweave pattern, then pick up around the edges and work one or two tiers of patterns outward, mitered at the corner; then finish the entire thing with a knitted on edging. I haven’t chosen the next set of framing patterns yet. By the time I get there, I’ll have figured it out.

As far as the proposal conference went, it was valuable from a couple of viewpoints. First, it turns out that I know more about my subject than I thought. Second, the state of the art has moved on in the last dozen years since I went to official proposal training. I did pick up quite a bit. The next challenge will be to impose the improved structures and tools in the workplace.

In other news – my upstream No Sheep swap partner sent me some wonderful goodies (more on this in the next post), but I have not heard from my downstream receiving partner yet. If I don’t hear tell of her preferences by mid week, I’ll have to pick something out with no guidance on yarn weight or color type. I hope I guess correctly.

And finally, I celebrate another birthday that came and went while I was away at the conference. I was treated to an excellent dinner at Savannah’s Olde Pink House by a dear friend, but also to celebrate, I just ordered myself three more books on lace knitting. Happy birthday, me!

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