Duchrow 73/6

Don't ask me why, but "knitted lace" is a term usually reserved for patterns with lace patterning in every row or round, while "lace knitting" can refer to lace patterns with plain rows/rounds in between the pattern rows/rounds.

You can sometimes tell the two apart by looking at the yarn overs in a piece. In a typical "lace knitting" pattern, the yarn overs are followed by a plain round of knit stitches, so there are holes defined by two threads twisted together (one thread is the yarn over, the other thread is the knit stitch above it).

"Lace knitting":

However, in a "knitted lace" pattern, the yarn overs aren't always followed by knit stitches, so the holes are defined by single threads.

"Knitted lace":


This particular knitted lace pattern is a traditional Shetland lace pattern called "Bird's Eye" or "Spider Lace." It's in more than one stitch pattern book, I'm sure; if you've got Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller, see page 132. Sharon Miller notes that it doesn't really look like it's a knitted pattern. I've always been fascinated by it for that reason, but I hadn't had an excuse to knit it up until a tiny picture in one of the Christine Duchrow books caught my eye. Two days later, I completed this doily:


Pattern: Pattern 6 from Christine Duchrow leaflet #73 (reprinted in The Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow, Volume III by Lacis)
Thread: Cordonnet 40 crochet cotton
Needles: 2 mm

Part of the fun for me in knitting this doily was bringing to life a piece from a weird old photo that may have been overlooked for decades. It's also the first piece I've made following an original Christine Duchrow leaflet.

The other part of the fun of course was the pleasure of seeing the bird's eye pattern unfold. It's a small stitch repeat and not difficult to work in the round despite yarn overs in every round. This stitch pattern in a piece worked back and forth is probably a bit trickier to make. (I've since noticed that the other Christine Duchrow pattern I've knitted, Egeblad, also features a stitch pattern in its outer rounds that is considered a traditional Shetland lace pattern: print o' the wave.)

This doily isn't the most ingeniously designed I've seen. The center eight-pointed star pattern simply ends with several plain rounds, then the bird's eye pattern starts after that without a connection to the center pattern. In fact, bird's eye is not even repeated by a multiple of eight times around the doily—it's repeated 28 times around. At first, just going by the number of stitches to work in the chart, I thought there might be an error in the pattern, but it was simply a matter of realizing that the bird's eye repeats weren't going to line up neatly over the repeats of the center star.

As it turned out, this particular pattern did not have any true errors as far as I could tell but there were definitely some quirks and potential pitfalls which I've been trying to document in some notes. Stay tuned for "German Knitting Patterns, part 3: Christine Duchrow," which I hope will be coming soon to the blog!

Yeah, I intend to reblock this doily at some point. It has an excessive number of crochet loops (meaning: many, many pins crowded together!) so I just focused on pulling and opening up the lace during the first blocking without worrying about making perfectly neat crochet loops. Next time, I'll just moisten it slightly, and I'll be able to pin it out again more evenly since I won't have to pull hard on the piece then.