Mediterranean Knotted Lace

I don't remember when I first encountered this lace, but about 2 years ago I got the book Mediterranean Knotted Lace by Elene Dickson and I immediately tried my hand at knotted lace. I quickly realized that although the basic knot was really easy, maintaining some sort of regular tension was most definitely not easy! To make matters worse, I used a really horrible poor quality crochet thread (no. 10) which made things harder than they should be.

That first winter, I learned the basic knots and then quickly moved to trying little motifs. It's a lot more fun to practice when you actually end up making a cute little motif than when you are just working on an endless edging! When I started the motif, I switched to DMC Cebelia No. 10, which made things much easier. The thread no longer pilled which helped a bit. As you can see, the tension is still all over the place, but at least it is starting to look like something! (Well, maybe not, but please humor me...)

As you can see it ruffles - a lot! I tried telling myself it's supposed to ruffle, but I'm not really buying it:)

In order to get more practice keeping my tension even, I decided to practice just rows of the basic loops. Well, that got boring, so I added a tiny edging at the top (see below). As you can see, the tension is better, but still needs lots of help! I then made a longer stretch of edging, but got bored about halfway through (not shown). I now use it as a bookmark:) With all of these I had also switched to smaller thread, using DMC Cebelia 30.

Since the edgings were not getting me very far - too boring - I went back to making a little motif. This one turned out much better than the previous one! The tension is still quite off though. I think it would really help if I saw a real-life version of the lace as opposed to just the few pictures in my book. I have a hard time gauging the relative sizes of the basic loops and small loops and large loops etc. Hopefully it will come with practice. I think it will also look better when I move to even tinier thread. For the time being, I will continue to practice using size 30.

(Don't mid the ends in the last picture. I didn't realize they weren't worked in until after I scanned it and I was too lazy to pull out the scanner again.)

Unfortunately I think I've regressed. After finishing the motif shown above, I put knotted lace aside for a few months. I recently started another little medallion and it's quite horrible. I'm thinking that for the time being, I should work at a more constant pace and not ignore it for months on end. Slow and steady should be my motto - a little every week or so.