The pattern is as follows:

2x 50g of Kidsilk Haze
7mm circular needles.

Cast on 141 stitches.
Knit stocking stitch until you are very, very close to running out of yarn. Guess roughly where you’re going to still get about 2 rows out of what’s left of the second ball.
Cast off.

I started this sometime in December I think. I have a third ball of the yarn because I initially expected to make it a little bigger. However, it’s quite heavy already and…also quite beautiful.

The Kidsilk Haze that I used was a Kaffe Fassett variegated colour. I think there were two colourways available at the time, a green woodlandy colour and this which, when I picked it up, spoke to me a bit of the sea. As I knit it though, it spoke to me more of mountains so it got named to a mountain range rather than some coastal village in Brittany.

picture of a handmade lace skirt

This photograph was taken with my phone because my camera is not quite to hand.

I completed a postgraduate diploma in information technology with Dublin City University in 2005, and following that, I started some handcrafts. I have done big pieces of mosaic, some tapestry and lots and lots of crochet. Sometime shortly after that – so at least four years ago I think, in Hickeys on Henry Street in Dublin I found a Twilleys Southern Comfort pattern book and bought it, having decided I really liked the idea of this skirt.

I then had trouble tracking down the thread to make it with. It’s 2 ply thread, very, very fine and most people make doilies with it. My handbag had this piece of paper with the ball requirements in it if I ever happened across it, and one day I did, in the wool shop in Tralee. While I was there, I also bought a few crochet hooks for such fine thread because it gets uncomfortable working with a metal hook all the time. The lady who runs the wool shop there told me she was surprised to see a young woman buying that thread and those hooks because in her experience, only the nuns bought that thread and those hooks, mainly to do laced edges on altar dressings.

The skirt I was making is basically transparent. The model in the pattern is wearing a red bikini underneath it. I couldn’t think of a greater difference between what most people tended to do with that thread (in Kerry at least) and what I was planning to do with it. (make something to make me look fantastically attractive).

The pattern called for more than three hundred stitches for a cast-on row. From there, it only got more. I don’t even know how many stitches there were in a row at the end but I would say 600 is probably a low estimate for it. In addition, many of them consisted of chains. Not too long after I started it, I made some mistake which I didn’t, out of unfamiliarity, catch until I had cheerfully done about 4 hours work. Not only that, I could not find it, and so I put it down for a while. That while was about 2 years.

I eventually pulled it out again about 18 months ago, ripped back as far as I dared -this was something that happened several times – there is nothing like seeing 4 hours work disappearing in 5 minutes. The thread being so fine was prone to tangling quite easily as well. I took it on holiday with me last March, to Inchydoney Island Spa (which is my favourite hotel in the world now) and got quite a bit done, hours, and hours of work every day. Sometimes sitting in the sun, glancing out on the Atlantic.

It was a mammoth amount of work. IF you look at it dispassionately, some rows took 15-20 minutes, other rows took somewhere north of 90 depending on how intricate it was or how tired I was. I stopped working on it if I was tired because I was guaranteed to see hours of work wasted. There are about 90 rows in it, so typically, start to finish, there’s some argument to suggest you could do it in about 120-150 hours. That doesn’t sound like an awful lot but the simple truth is it is very, very hard to work on a single piece of crochet for that amount of time without a) hurting your hands or b) getting very bored. The vast majority of the stitches were the simplest of crochet stitches, chains in the air. There is no way I could have ever done this in four weeks solidly. I would have simply gone mad.

But the thread it’s made from is beautiful. And as it got longer and started to look like a skirt rather than a belt gone wrong, it got easier, and easier to do. And I suppose the experience of doing it had to be making it easier and easier to do.  The last row, which was the most intricate of the entire pattern took about 90 minutes today. Even stitching the last stitch, I cannot quite believe it’s over.

It means that my knit group now assess yarn purchases in terms of whether it is as much money as Treasa would spend or somewhat less bankrupting. I have 100g of the stuff, it’s a dead simple pattern called “cast on as many stitches as you think you want and then sock stitch your way through the yarn until you’ve just enough left to cast off”. I estimate it will be finished in February some time, the way things are going. But already the colours are looking very attractive and I will find some mountain to call it after at some stage.

So I worked the lines, and there they were finished, two or three weeks ago, Go me, interesting looking pile of silky loops. All I had to do was join them together.

The joining has not gone without problems. Two of the lines hooked up nicely; the third has been problematic so often that I have decided to abandon the project, rip it out and ditch it, as far as that yarn is concerned, all together. I have to say the decision had an air of inevitability about it bearing in mind that there had been one major rip out and three minor rips. The thread was also a balls to work with – so much so that I’ve no real wish to recycle the yarn into anything else, I’m done with it. No more silky look. I haven’t seen it for sale for a while so I assume it’s been discontinued.

It’s very disappointing because to be honest, as bits of it were coming together, it looked like it could be great. Unfortunately, I signally failed to get it together in any wearable form. I’m not prepared to abandon the plans for the dress – I have different yarn set aside for that (at last I think I do; it’s supposed to be in a yarn box I haven’t inspected in some time. It was an olive green and it’s a bit more substantial than the silky stuff) – but nor am I going to have time to complete that any time soon. The hairpin loom will have to be set aside – so far I’ve not managed to complete any project off it – the Kristin Omdahl scarf has been a disaster and is also waiting rip out. If anyone is interested in a pile of some sort of Noro, currently in hairpin loops, they’re welcome to it. I have decided I really don’t like it.

In the meantime I’m in the middle of making a new Doris Chan tank top from Amazing Crochet Lace, and it’s flying along. Depending on how much yarn it swallows up I may do a couple of them in different colours.

In other more useful news I am pointing you to this beauty of a website. I’ve met some of those little cats and the squirrel too. They are GORGEOUS. Full of cute.

This is the infamous lace skirt, in a pile on the floor in the living room. I’m about half way through it which means I should be ready to wear it in 3 years time if the half done is anything to go by.

I love it. I calculated one day that by the time it was finished, there would be a minimum of a quarter of a million separate stitches in it. It’s a monumental work and yet I love the thread it’s worked in. Which, incidentally, is increasingly difficult to get because Twilley’s have stopped supplying it and are just running down stocks of it now. If you see any Southern Comfort fine crochet thread in Ireland, I really need to know about it. It doesn’t need to be in wedding dress colour (that’s all I could find at the time I was buying it).

The plan for the skirt – when it’s finished – is to line it with some sort of burgundy colour; a strong contrast anyway. I’m going to make it quite a bit longer than the pattern calls for because I’m tall and I’d like it to end a bit further than just at my knee. I’ve done a lot of work on it this year – the ladies of Swords Knit Night will confirm that they saw a lot of it for a while. I took a break from it recently and have been doing other stuff.

Currently on the sofa is a small doily. I think it’ll be about 15cm across when I finish it, in about an hour’s time. That close. One of my ambitions for this year was to finish a doily and that’s getting really close. When that is done, I’ll probably try and finish off the pink doily which has been in production for more than a year too. I need to track down the pattern though; it’s not with the rest of the French doily patterns. Hope it’s in the office or that ambition will be slightly screwed. Today I bought even more fine thread – I’m really not short of it so shouldn’t but Stitch, where I was busily buying tape measures (having lost mine) had nice looking thread that I hadn’t seen before and I have a table cloth vibe out of it. I will probably have to design it myself though as I don’t know if i actually have a pattern I like for one. It will take a long time, however; table cloths are Big.

When I was in Springwools with two friends a while back, I picked up a Rowan pattern book that just looked appealing, and it had in it some knitting patterns that I liked, both of tank tops. I’ve started one. It’s not difficult but it’s going to take a while. My god knitting takes ages. It’s not that I didn’t know this but really, this is going to take Ages. I have spent about 5 hours knitting it today, and 2 last night and in total, I’m’ about one seventh the way through the pattern. And I’m bored so it’s being set aside in favour of the crochet – doily tonight – skirt when I’m doilified.

Today has been productive. Stupid stuff that I haven’t really had loads of time to do lately like watch recorded episodes of Coast, and all that knitting and crochet. It was  a lovely day outside and if my garden furniture didn’t also happen to be doubling as my garden I may have sat outside. But either way, it didn’t much matter because I got 3 lots of laundry done, all that knitting, all that crochet, lovely breakfast pancakes (only burned one), lovely lunch smoothie with enough over for tomorrow (that’s prepared) and lovely dinner with far too much chili sauce. It just feels like a really nice day.

Helpfully, I managed to record last night’s Jean Michel Jarre concert from Monaco and played it twice today.

All told, really happy and cannot complain.

Yesterday I went to Springwools in Walkinstown with two friends. We all spent money. I need to stop buying yarn. I don’t need any more and I have any number of WIPS in progress. But I found this pattern book and now I’m doing the lime green tank top in it. I may be some time. Between it and the long running crochet thread skirt and the Jean dress….I probably need time off work to do this.

I wanted it for a mesh skirt. In the photograph in the middle of the book, the model is lying languourously – god that looks wrong – on a beach wearing a red bikini underneath the mesh skirt. She may look langorous. I don’t know. All I know is that at a time when decent crochet patterns were hard to come by, this was a drop of beauty in an ocean full of granny squares and doilies. So I bought adequate yarn to do the skirt, start it, discover I was going to be collecting 1.5mm hooks for a while until I found one I liked, and then I made a mistake. Not only did I make a mistake, I careered on for a while until I discovered I’d made a mistake. I estimated at the time (I was at knit night when I realised that Heuston, we have a serious problem) I had made the mistake three hours ago.

You have no idea how soul destroying that is. I never quite got around to dealing with it and in the meantime made two cardigans and a shawl and a scarf and discovered Doris Chan and Kristin Omdahl. But I decided not so long ago to take out the skirt again. It is still cute. It is still sexy. And I still have trouble equating it to the thread that apparently the nuns used to embellish altar hangings with. Apparently no one had bought fine hooks in that shop for years, apart from nuns. Anyway.

I ripped back as far back as I could think would cover the error – and that took a while – and yes, I wept a quiet tear for it – and since then I have been working on it. I have to tell you an immense amount of work is going to go into this skirt because there are at least 80 rows to go and I am timing myself at around 3o minutes a row at the moment. But it is utterly beautiful.

I have a serious amount of work to go, and actually right now I am prevaricating about going doing the increase line, which I have a horrible suspicion may have been the cause of some problems last time round. But still…

I learned recently that Thomas Bramsden had decided to discontinue the Southern Comfort yarn. It’s extremely regretable, because it’s lovely, lovely cotton to work with.

Yesterday evening I got the train to Cork. While I’d normally bring some crochet with me I find it a hassle on the train because the balls go all over the shop and it’s hard to keep the pattern from moving so I brought some tapestry with me. Ah yes, Tapestry. I used to do a lot of it until crochet arrived. Frankly there are days I prefer tapestry. Like the crochet though, there are works under way nowhere close to being finish.

I can’t organise this all on ravelry and frankly I’d prefer to keep it all under control here on my own site which is my own project dumping ground. So here we go:

Tapestry.

• The Dancers. The Dancers are *nearly* finished and have been *nearly finished* for almost a year. I bought the canvas in Australia and the thread, unfortunately, turned out to be the most god awful shiny embroidery stuff that I really and truly hated. It has been a long hard slog. But it is *nearly* finished. It is just too big to manage on a train. I will go at it again tonight, I think.
• The lighthouse. This I think was ordered from canevas.com which is my favourite website on the web because it has the most amazing selection of tapestry canvases. No photography or yarn site even comes close. This is what I took on the train with me. It looks a bit like Chenal du Four, one of my favourite lighthouses.
• Cordouan. Another lighthouse (there’s a theme here), which is a little easier than the other lighthouse. I think I picked that one up in the shop in Lyon which is my favourite bricks and mortar sewing shop in the world because it has a fantastic collection of canvases as well. The last thing said to me the last time I was there was “Ouf, il ya do boulot la”. There is indeed plenty of work. I need to finish the dancers before I start looking at the others.

There is another small Breton scene in the tapestry bag and then after that I believe there are another four or five canvases for me to get stuck into. One of them is an Aerospatiale, and one is a harbour. I can’t remember what the rest are; I don’t have thread for any of them though on the grounds that I should finish out what I have thread for.

Knitting

• The lightblue winter tank top which is dead easy and which is going nowhere. I think I’m in the middle of the back of it at the moment, so really, a few hours and I’d make a great stab at it.
• There’s a cowl somewhere that started off life being knitted but I think it’s currently being crocheted. I’m hiding it in the knitting list.

Crochet

Arghh.

• The missing pink doily. Certainly was moved to the new house. I have no idea where it is now.
• The missing black Russian shawl. Pretty certain it’s with the missing pink doily probably with a few bits and pieces. I call these two Missing WIPs.
• The yellow doily – 2 rows to go. In mega thin thread. I lack the motivation. It’s nearly finished. Theoretically, the rest of that thread – some Anchor stuff in yellow and burgundy is set aside for a table cloth. I have not yet found the pattern.
• The Own Design Shawl that was part broomstick but is too much for broomstick. I’m 25% of the way through it. It was for *this* winter. Yarn was bought for that project. Shouldn’t have.
• The Dragonfly shawl by Kristin Omdahl. A stash buster this one, I think two reps of the pattern are done (not rows, rep of pattern). It will be lovely if I get it finished. This is from a huge stash of yarn bought in Germany for a dress I no longer want to make. Once it’s done, I have something else planned for the rest of that yarn. I cannot remember what. But this is a STASHBUSTER project.
• The Tressa scarf by Kristin Omdahl. It is under production as in I’ve done all the strips in Noro and am now trying to construct the scarf. The assembly is not going according to plan and if anyone wants my opinion, Noro is a lousy choice for yarn for this. However, it was a STASHBUSTER project.
• The baby blanket. It’s not even that difficult. It’s just boring.
• The Lotus dress. Jennifer Hansen. Can’t imagine this will be hard when I get going but so far only two loops done. Interestingly enough, the patter does both a top and a dress and I’m planning to use one of each to stashbust two lots of yarn. If that works, this will be a STASHBUSTER squared pattern.
• The cowl. The Lang silky dream is set aside for this, and it’s just a question whether I will broomstick it or not. STASHBUSTER
• The Twilley’s skirt. I was looking at this yesterday. I’ve been doing it for a while and while it’s thin and intricate, if I could only get my act together  it would be beautiful. It probably won’t fit me given I started it 3 years ago at least.
• The pink teeshirt which involves about 75 squares and in theory I should just like make a few of those squares any time I’m bored. Which never happens.

That list seems worryingly short. Really, really short. I have also some shiny silver stuff that is earmarked for a winter shawl. Oops. There is more cotton earmarked for another teeshirt in squares going nowhere until the pink one is finished. There is a lot of fine cotton also set aside for table cloth brought from France which will go nowhere until I find the pink doily what’s gone missing. There is also a teacosy on the queue.

I have some holidays left to take by the end of the year. I may just spend it doing crochet and knitting and tapestry.

But before I do it, I need to learn how to use the loom properly and that’s not necessarily straightforward. As far as I knew, no one I know uses anything like it. Tunisian, yes, the odd bit of broomstick, well I’ve that well mastered (and anyway it’s easy) but hairpin…hmmm. So I was on the look out for a smaller project that would allow me to get to grips with the technique before going all out on a dress which incidentally is now nicknamed my Jean Byrne dress. If you’re not from Ireland, I will only point you towards this Youtube video as to where that nickname is coming from, via Niall [oh yeah Niall...I have not forgotten...]. She’s our top weather forecaster.

Anyway, armed with books by Kristin Omdahl and Doris Chan, and an assortment of youtube videos, I had a go at this and it seemed to be straightforward.

Thursday last I was back at knitting group for the first time in 2 or 3 years and while I was there, I was handed back two Interweave crochet magazines, one of which included this, the Tressa shawl by Kristin Omdahl. It’s in a book I don’t currently own, but have on my wishlist (for when I get through the bunch of projects I have planned from Kristin’s other book), but the pattern was published in Interweave Crochet, so I have that and so there. The pattern calls for ribbon yarn which I don’t have and won’t be getting until I’ve done some serious destashing so on Thursday night I was bundling through the stash boxes looking for something I had an adequate supply of. I found some Noro Silk Garden Lite of which I have three skeins. Two of them had been opened and used and frogged. I am pretty certain some of that was broomstick which went wrong and some of it was plans for a blanket which I just abandoned because I couldn’t get it to work out nicely. I picked up a third skein somewhere else; don’t know why. It’s not cheap as yarn goes.

So as of last night it’s been wound up on the loom. I need to make three strips (there will be a photographic record of this) and then start joining them up. The first strip is done and I’m about 20% the way through the second. If Fianna Fail would stop having political heaves and take a break from destabilising the country on a daily basis, I might actually get it finished today. Here’s a bit of what it looks like:

The yarn isn’t all that colour – it meanders from grey to yellow to assorted blues, reds and purples. It’s hard to imagine that those strips will translate into what you see in the image behind it.

particularly when you see it like this.

I actually have stash yarn for the dress above….so my hope is at least to get this finished over the weekend (by listening to music only internet radio from Florida for example and not hearing about political unrest in the corridors of the governing party) so that I can start at that.

There’s a lot of work on my crochet pallet at the moment; I am doing another pattern of Kristin’s, a Dragonfly shawl, and I have plans for another shawl from the same book (it’s called Crochet So Fine and there are some really beautiful things in it). I’m also lining up a thread skirt which I have been making for quite a while. The main objective is to destash a lot of stuff as far as possible so that I can actually more easily match yarn to projects instead of buying stuff on spec.

The choker was made from broomstick lace and frankly, it’s a, prototype. Yeah that’s the word. I got a couple of things wrong about it. Firstly I did it in Lang Silk Dream yarn. It’s gorgeous. I have two colours, one which you could call Burgundy and one which you could call icy pink. I’m sure Lang have different colour way titles for them. It is absolutely beautiful yarn to work with and unfortunately I don’t have too much of it because I bought what one stall holder had at the Knitnstitch show a couple of years. Initially it was going to be a scarf but I decided during the week that I had a a different plan for it.

When you put it on, it’s really comfortable to wear and so, so lovely and warm. So much so that instead of doing a new choker without the little imperfections, I am toying with using the three remaining balls to make a cowl, in the round, which will be no small task given what working with the large knitting needles is like. But I will probably start it early tomorrow morning if I don’t do it tonight.

When it’s done, I will write a pattern for it and put it up on Ravelry. I now want more of that yarn. I still, however, want to make a beautiful choker but suspect that in fact, even if I used the Noro silk garden that I have upstairs, I’ll have the same issue called “it stretches”. That being said, it’s occurred to me that maybe I could use the Noro to make the cowl and do something else again with the Lang.

While wandering around twitter today, I found this which tells me what I always knew. The infrastructure is there for knitting, but no so much for crochet, but there is a greater interest in crochet at the moment.

I love the possibilities of crochet; and I have quite a few very sweet patterns. But I have to say when I was starting off 3 or 4 years ago, I found patterns hard to come by. Now I just find time hard to come by.

As a result of this, a few of my crochet items are designed by me. The shawl I wear at work, for example, the choker I finished today, other bits and pieces. The shawl I am making for home (but which is a lot of work….:-) If you are interested in crochet, Ravelry is a useful place to start looking for patterns and my designers of choice are Kristin Omdahl and Doris Chan.

And me of course. I swear I will put up that choker when I figure out what yarn to use to make it.