I had just one skein of a bright red baby alpaca fingering weight from Pacific Meadows Alpacas, bought at Stitches. I had someone for whom it was just the right color–but there wasn’t enough of it. Unless… I put it together with some Jaggerspun Zephyr in garnet, and–perfect! Make it thicker=bigger needles=stretches farther.
I learned via Kaffe Fassett years ago to look at yarns with an eye towards putting two slightly different colors together to create a third. In this case, the silk content and the lighter color of the Zephyr really sets off the PMA’s red.
I don’t remember that I’ve knitted Barbara Walker’s English Lace before; her much-simpler English Mesh lace, which makes for good carrying-around knitting, certainly. Unblocked, this one seemed like an awful lot of extra work to get the same look; blocked, it was, oh, now I see! English Lace is unusual in that it has places where you treat a yarnover in such a way that, instead of creating a large round hole, you’re creating one with a slash through it–kind of an anti-lace warning sign, with its appropriately red slash mark through the circle. Cute.
Three repeats, 27 stitches, size 7mm needles, 7.5″ wide x 53″ long as it lies flat on the floor. Started last night a little before dinner, cast off at one minute after midnight. For a friend who likes bold and red and big (I wish I’d bought a second skein! But it’ll do.)