Gladys Amedro's Cobweb Lace Wrap

This must be the pattern I've knit more than any other. It's from Amedro's book "Shetland Lace".

First of all, I knit it for Rachel's 40th birthday -- a daring step at the time, as I had never knit with cobweb yarn before. Here is Rachel wearing it, at her neice Kirsty's christening:

Then, some years later, her daughter Helen paid me the ultimate compliment of asking for a shawl like her mother's. I tried to persuade her to have it in colour, since I have a stash-ful of lovely lace yarns. Nope -- black was clearly the new black for London's teenagers. I bought the yarn when we were in China in April, '03. Merino, I think. Plyed. Lovely to work with. It must be slightly heavier than Shetland cobweb-weight, as the resulting shawl was slightly larger than the original. I have enough left to knit something else...

I kept to the shape (and the edgings) of the original, because it seemed a useful and wearable shape. But I put in patterns from Sharon Miller's wonderful book "Heirloom Knitting", just for variety. The centre panel is Fern Lace, p. 91 and the wings are Mirrored Fern, on page 90. The patterns have a different number of rows in the repeat. I didn't worry about working anything out in advance (except for fitting the patterns into the stitch count -- a very slight adjustment was necessary). And I used Amedro's suggestion of using bobby pins (hair clips) gripping the pages from the side, to keep my places in the two patterns.

Finally (so far), last year, my sister thought she'd like one for her 70th birthday. Again, I substituted lace patterns from Sharon Miller's book, while keeping Amedro's shape. The patterns in this case are the Bead Losenge, p. 88, on the sides and the Antique Centre, p. 147, in the centre. The yarn is Heirloom Knitting's "Merino Lace", chosen by the recipient.

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