The Lady Eleanor is begun!

I am among the many who fell madly in love with Lady Eleanor when Kathleen Power Johnson introduced her in Scarf Style. I have never knit entrelac though I’ve watched Meg Swansen do it with my mouth hanging open (she can knit BACKWARDS!!!) However, as I contemplated undertaking this project, the biggest drawback to me was what kind of yarn to use. Much of the charm of the original Lady Eleanor is the woodsy yarn, a 100% wool vegetable-dyed yarn called Forever Random in a shade called Faerie Queen. The yarn alone costs over $300!

Considering the size of my stash, I was sure there had to be something in there that would work. My first thought was several skeins of vegetable-dyed 100% silk that I bought from Blue Heron a long, long time ago and have been picking away at but have never really used fully. However, it is very fine yarn and I felt I needed to combine it with something else to give the right weight to the finished shawl.

I had recently purchased a few skeins of laceweight 100% wool that was also vegetable-dyed from Handpainted Yarn, a women’s collaborative from Uruguay. I loved the shades of the yarn and decided to try knitting the wool and the silk together. It proved to be an excellent combination. The wool gave the knitted fabric a slightly rustic look and the silk added drape and shimmer. So I started knitting.
Entrelac is a confusing business but once you get the hang of it, it becomes addictive. Since you are only working on 18 stitches at a time, it seems to flow and playing with the combinations of colors is great fun.

I have a feeling that this project could take a long time. I am knitting it on #5 needles so it is fine and close knit but so far I love the way it is turning out. I imagine once it becomes heavy enough to make continual turning impractical, I’ll experiment with Meg Swansen’s backwards knitting technique.

This is good practice. I’m also drooling over the Forest Path Shawl which is also knit in entrelac only using lace patterns in each square. I have a bag of a lavishly beautiful super-fine alpaca in a color called Morning Mist put aside for it. So much yarn, so little time, as every knitter I know loves to say. Well, as Marilyn, everybody’s favorite Knitting Curmudgeon always says, “Shut up, I’m counting.”

Crabby is as crabby does.

Thanks for reading.