Diamonds are forever
Wednesday November 29th 2006, 11:54 am
Filed under: Knit


About seven years ago, I used Barbara Walker’s Diamond Mesh pattern to knit a large, very soft kid mohair stole to wrap around an old friend recovering from back surgery. The memory of her surprised, thrilled face as I gave it to her is one of the great little joys of my life. I wasn’t about to tell her, though, that the pattern had driven me nuts: I could see how it should be so easy, but it just wasn’t coming to me. How do you see when it’s a yo, k1, yo at the top of a triangle and when it’s a k3? I’d kept picking it up, working on it awhile, and putting it down to go work on something I could actually relax with while doing. It had taken me two months to finish.

Last week, going through my stash, I stumbled across a partial ball of Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight in jade and one of Misti baby alpaca laceweight in forest, and the two of them together! But there wasn’t as much of the Zephyr as I was comfortable with. I didn’t want to run out.

The day before, someone had posted on one of the knitting lists that she had some expensive cashmere, couldn’t afford to buy more, wanted to make a really nice gift with it, but what? When she wasn’t sure she had enough? I told her, go for a mesh lace pattern and largeish needles to stretch the yardage out; it’ll work.

Time to take my own advice. Let’s try that Diamond Mesh pattern again.

Four days. Fingertip-to-fingertip, and the best part of it, was, I immediately got it! It was intuitively obvious, just like I had known it could be if I only had enough experience. And somehow this time the math of it, the numbers and the geometry in its structure, felt inherently satisfying, like a well-written piece of music.


4 Comments so far
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It’s beautiful! I can read the pattern of the stitches, as it were, but I can definitely also see how it could be confusing to just pick it up and know what to do whilst in the middle of the pattern.

Comment by Joni 11.30.06 @ 10:50 am

Thank you, Joni! It took me three days to get Blogger to accept a picture–they were tweaking the system, and things seem to work now.

Comment by AlisonH 11.30.06 @ 1:30 pm

Yay!I keep knitting and knitting hoping that this stuff will one day fall into place for me. Just as you describe.

What a wonderful, heartening description. Thanks!

Comment by Robin 11.30.06 @ 3:00 pm

wow, that is one beautiful scarf/shawl, Alison. I love the colour.

Comment by Mary Anne 12.01.06 @ 7:43 pm



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