I was knitting the latest version of the lacy leaf scarf pattern for the crowd at Fresh Purls, getting ready for two introductory lace workshops there Oct. 18 and 25,  when I heard a whisper from the little voice that I should listen to more often.

     "Steam," it said. There was something about the yarn, a shimmery silver and gold dk weight called Songe by Bouton d'Or, which made me realize the wavy edges would not lie flat with simple wet blocking. At the end of the road, when the knitting was all done, the piece doubled over and patted into shape on the ironing board,  I saw that it was so. By that time I had been listening to the little voice long enough so that I knew I was going to do it.

      "Just a little steam," the voice said.

     The danger with steam is that too much of it can take all the life out of a yarn, leaving behind a limp mass. Yarns with a high synthetic content, like Songe, are particularly vulnerable to the perils of too much steam. I know this all to well because many years ago I destroyed a perfectly good sweater with steam blocking. All that work, and the knitting nearly melted. 
      But the little voice kept telling me that was then, not now. And it was time to revisit steam, just enough steam to relax the scarf edges, which expand and contract just like the leaves they represent.  The trick with steam is to never let the iron actually touch the knitted fabric. The iron must hover briefly. It can always return for another pass, say about 2"  above the surface of the knitting. But the effect of too heavy a hand cannot be undone.

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     I don't care how many times I knit the same knitting pattern - how well I think I know its foibles. I always come away with another insight - a nugget I want to share.

    

     And so it was when the delightful Karen Holmes of Fresh Purls gave me two balls of Songe, a heavenly soft kid mohair blend, to knit a sample of the lacy leaf scarf in the Elegant Knitter for her shop.

    

      The lacy leaf scarf is the text for an introduction to lace that I will be offering in two workshops on consecutive Saturdays, Oct. 18 and Oct. 25 at Fresh Purls, 769A Hope St., on the East Side of Providence. I can't wait!

      The lacy leaf scarf has turned out to be a wonderfully versatile knitting pattern, adaptable to a number of yarns and stitch gauges. The design may look complicated, but it's not.

       Working a pattern for the first time - especially knittinglace - can be kind of like driving blind. You don't know where you're going. But after a while, you can look at the stitches in front of you and predict what comes next.

       This particular pattern is made up of just a few elements, repeated over and over again in a changing sequence.  

       Two leaves, side by side, make up one pattern repeat. As one leaf gets wider, its companion gets narrower. And at a certain point they reverse direction. Together the number of stitches in the two leaves add up to 10.

        I was on about the umpteenth pattern repeat, thinking about how bring home all the variations on ten when I came up with the mental image of two elevators. They stop only at odd-numbered floors between 1 and 9. When one goes up to the ninth floor, the other decends to the first floor.

9 and 1

7 and 3

5 and 5

3 and 7

1 and 9.

On and on, like a mantra. 
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I was in the middle of the obligatory daily writing, usually done in an office just enough removed from the elements to be able to shut out the sun and the splendid blue sky that has lifted our spirits in these last few weeks.. 

     But yesterday, I was stranded at home, without wheels, working doubly hard to resist the temptations of the back yard, where my canine friends Ming Ming and Jessie alternately romped and lounged under the beech tree. The longer I kept at it on the patio, the laptop hooked up to an outdoor extension cord, the more I despaired that I would every join them in enjoying the moments of the day.

    And then the mail came. Everything stopped as I pulled out a big envelope with yarn samples. There's nothing like yarn to lift the spirits! 
    The yarn came from Dye Dreams, a new company that offers delicious colors in two yarns, the ultrasoft but sturdy wool of the BlueFaced Leicester sheep  and a "celestial" yarn that is 50 percent alpaca, 30 merino and 20 percent silk. They are so wicked good with color!

     For those of you lucky enough to be in Vermont, they will be at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival Saturday and Sunday.

Last spring, I had spotted Dye Dreams at the Connecticut Sheep and Wool Festival, when everyone was ready to go home and I had been dispatched to corral an errant member of our group, much like the sheep dogs that were being put through their paces in the meadow off the display barns.I made a last-minute purchase of 400 yards of fingering weight BFL in a faded denim. It was destined to become a little shawl that will go to a special someone at Christmas time.  I look at it
admiringly once in a while. 

I turned to Dye Dreams again when one of my favorite couples announced their engagement and I decided to make them a wedding throw. And Mona at Dye Dreams has been very generous with her samples, including not only greens and a gold but rusts, reds, and browns. 

The bride-to-be wants to be able to use the throw either in the living room, where there will be a cream-colored sofa, or in the bedroom, where the bedding will be on the warm side of green. I'm thinking a sun-kissed moss or a gold, but I think I'd better let the bride weigh in as long as I've gone this far. So the color samples are going back in the mail, but in the mean time, I'll be working up swatches and calculating yardage! 
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