Lace knitting is a style of knitting characterized by stable "holes" in the fabric arranged in beautiful ways. Lace is sometimes considered the pinnacle of knitting, because of its complexity and because woven fabrics cannot have holes (easily). Knit hat, yarn, and knitting needles. ... Fabric may mean: Cloth, a flexible artificial material made up of a network of natural or artificial fibres Fabric (club), a London dance club Fibre Channel fabric, a network of Fibre Channel devices enabled by a Fibre Channel switch using the FC-SW topology This is a disambiguation page, a... A nymph with morning glory flowers by Lefebvre. ... Knit hat, yarn, and knitting needles. ... A woven is a cloth formed by weaving. ...

Eyelet patterns are those in which the holes make up only a small fraction of the fabric and are isolated into clusters (e.g., little rosettes of one hole surrounded by six others in a hexagon). Rosettes can refer for: A small, circular, device that can be awarded with medals (see: Rosette (decoration)). A type of plant with their leaves at an upset stem in a typical form. ...

At the other extreme, some knitted lace is almost all holes, e.g., faggoting. Famous examples include the wedding ring shawl of Shetland knitting, a shawl so fine that it could be drawn through a wedding ring. Shetland knitted lace became extremely popular in Victorian England when Queen Victoria became a Shetland lace enthusiast. From there, knitting patterns for the shawls were printed in English women's magazines where they were copied in Iceland with single ply wool. A few types of knitted fabric are so fundamental, that they have been adopted as part of the language of knitting, similar to techniques such as yarn over or decrease. ...

Knitted lace is extremely elastic, deforming easily to fit whatever it is draped on. As a consequence, knitted lace garments tend to deform over time. Men and women wearing suits, an example of one of the many modern forms of clothing (from the 1937 Chicago Woolen Mills catalog) Clothing is defined, in its broadest sense, as coverings for the torso and limbs as well as coverings for the hands (gloves), feet (socks, shoes, sandals, boots...

Technique

A hole can be introduced into a knitted fabric by pairing a yarn-over stitch with a nearby (usually adjacent) decrease. If the decrease precedes the yarn-over, it should typically slant right as seen from the right side (e.g., k2tog, not k2tog tbl; see knitting abbreviations). If the decrease follows the yarn-over, it should typically slant left as seen from the right side (e.g., k2tog tbl, not k2tog). These slants pull the fabric away from the yarn-over, opening up the hole. A decrease in knitting is a reduction in the number of stitches, usually accomplished by suspending the stitch to be decreased from another existing stitch or by knitting it together with another stitch. ... Knitting abbreviations are often used for brevity in describing knitting patterns. ...

Pairing a yarn-over with a decrease keeps the stitch count constant. Many beautiful patterns separate the yarn-over and decrease stitches, e.g., k2tog, k5, yo. Separating the yarn-over from its decrease "tilts" all the intervening stitches towards the decrease. The tilt may form part of the design, e.g., mimicking the veins in a leaf. A decrease in knitting is a reduction in the number of stitches, usually accomplished by suspending the stitch to be decreased from another existing stitch or by knitting it together with another stitch. ...

There are few constraints on positioning the holes, so practically any picture or pattern can be outlined with holes; common motifs include leaves, rosettes, ferns and flowers. To design a simple lace motif, a knitter can draw its lines on a piece of knitting graph paper; right-slanting lines should be produced with "k2tog, yo" stitch-pairs (as seen on the right side) whereas left-slanting lines should be produced with "yo, k2tog tbl" stitch pairs (again, as seen on the right side). More sophisticated patterns will change the grain of the fabric to help the design, by separating the yarn-overs and decreases. (Perhaps illustrate w/example such as Frost Flowers from BGW #1?) Knit hat, yarn, and knitting needles. ... A decrease in knitting is a reduction in the number of stitches, usually accomplished by suspending the stitch to be decreased from another existing stitch or by knitting it together with another stitch. ...

Simple examples

A horizontal row of holes can be produced by the pattern: *k3, k2tog, yo, k3*.

A pair of vertical columns can be produced by stacking the pattern: (k, k2tog, yo, k, yo, k2tog tbl, k) on the right side. Here the flanking decreases slant outwards away from the central stitch. For a thicker central column, one can move the decreases so that they slant inwards: (k, yo, dec 2 symmetrically, yo, k). For making the same pattern on the wrong side, the converse stitch patterns are: (p, p2tog, yo, p, yo, p2tog tbl, p) and (p, yo, dec 2 symmetrically, yo, p), respectively.

A diagonal row of holes can be made by shifting the (yo, dec) every row or every other row, e.g.,

• Row 1: k, k2tog, yo, k5
• Row 3: k3, k2tog, yo, k3
• Row 5: k5, k2tog, yo, k1

History and comparison to other laces

Lace knitting is generally not as fine as other forms of lace, such as needle lace or bobbin lace. However, it is better suited for garments, being softer and much faster to produce. Needle Lace borders from the Erzgebirge mountains Germany in 1884, displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum. ... Making bobbin lace Bobbin lace is a delicate lace that uses wound spools of thread (the bobbins) to weave together the shapes in the lace. ...

References

• (2002) Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book, updated ed., Sixth and Spring Books. ISBN 193154316X

• (1979) Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework, Reader's Digest Association. ISBN 0895770598