Knotted Lace

I had wanted to get back to knotted lace for a while, but I held off for several reasons.  One reason is that I was afraid that making this knot would cause me to forget how to make the puncetto knot.  By now I hope I am familiar enough with puncetto that I don't have to worry about that.  I haven't worked on it since starting this, so I may very well be wrong.  I would hate to be in a position that I would have to look up how to make the basic knot whenever I picked up puncetto.  It was nice getting to the point where I no longer had to think about that!

Anyways, when I first started this I had no real finished piece in mind and I started to play with the center ring.  Previously I had always had a hard time making all the picots the same size.  When I started I also figured that the two knots are similar or the same and I made the knots on the inner round like a puncetto knot.  After connecting the picots, I looked at the knotted lace book again more carefully, and I had to admit that I am pretty sure the two knots are different.  Oh well, I switched to making the knot as is describe in my knotted lace book.

With the center ring completed with more or less even picots, I decided to keep working basic loops until I got sick of the piece.  As I went from round to round I tried to keep the work as flat as possible, which obviously did not work out too well.  I ended up increasing from 12 loops/round to 24 and then 48 loops/round.  At some point and I am not entirely sure where, I lost two loops and I ended up with only 46.  I think I messed up when increasing from 24 to 48.  Since I still had nothing specific planned at that point I decided not to worry about it and continued with my not-so-flat but trying to be flat piece.

After a while the row upon row of basic rows ended up being a bit boring and I decided to make the edging featured in one of the samplers in my knotted lace book.  In the book the sampler is attached to a fabric center, and instead of using  a fabric center I used a lace center.  Similar to my observations the last time I played with this lace, switching from basic loops to large loops makes it much harder to keep everything flat and even.  Let's not even talk about the long picots...

Over all it was an enjoyable little piece to make and I got most of it done over the long weekend. I am not sure when I will pick this lace up again, but that's OK too.  Now I just need to make sure I still remember how to make puncetto and I will be all set!

The piece is made with DMC cebelia 30 in ecru and is ~ 3 inches in diameter.  The outer few rows are made following beginner's samples 1 from Mediterranean Knotted Lace by Elena Dickson.