Throwback Thursday: Lace

In which I share vague recollections about books I read long ago that have stuck with me. 

Since I've read a couple of sex-heavy books recently, I'm going to stick with that theme here. I'm reaching waaaay back to a book that my friends all passed around in middle school until someone's mom got wind of it and snatched it away: Lace by Shirley Conran. I don't remember who first got hold of this book, but I am forever indebted to that person for an image that has been seared into my brain ever since then.

Now I don't recall a thing about the plot, and I don't recall if I even read the whole book or just the juicy parts. According to Goodreads, the novel is about four women in their forties who are called together by a young actress who wants to know which of them is her mother. The women have been sharing their secrets for decades and refuse to answer, so the young woman travels around the world trying to learn the truth herself. Also, everybody in this book is rich and glamorous, which I'm pretty sure was a requirement for books published in the 1980s.

Here is all that I remember about this book: there is a scene in which a man and a woman are getting it on, and he reaches into a goldfish bowl next to the bed, pulls out a fish, shoves it in her hooha, and then lays on top of her so she cannot move (she is understandably trying to struggle), after which she then enjoys the feeling of the fish fluttering around inside her. It was horrifying, and still is. Imagine reading such a thing when you are around 12 years old and are still formulating your ideas about what happens during sex.

Needless to say, it was unforgettable. By the way, Lace has a 3.78 star rating on Goodreads, which isn't too shabby, and there's also a sequel creatively called Lace 2. Both books, surprisingly, are available in my library system so I'm wondering if they are actually good since they've been kept in some libraries' collections for more than 30 years after publication. I'm unlikely to read them, but certainly let me know if you do.

Sunday Knitting

After the disappointment of my failed Pianissimo, I have moved on to a new sweater project. I've long been trying to find a use for some Wool Bam Boo yarn I bought when Windsor Button was closing, and failing to find the right project. This is why I don't buy yarn without knowing what it's for. Usually I choose a pattern I want to make, then find yarn for it. But when my favorite yarn store was closing and selling everything for cheap, I panicked.

Finally I found a pattern called Nympheas, a lovely short-sleeved pullover with a simple lace pattern, and cast on.

So far, so good.

Mind you, I didn't exactly do a proper swatch. I knit a swatch and measured it, but I didn't bother with the whole washing and blocking and measuring again because I did it for Pianissimo and look what that got me. Anyhow, this is a pretty quick project so far and I think I'll be able to tell soon if it's coming out close to the right size or not.

The bottom curled up edge is going to be folded under and hemmed, revealing a picot edge. The lace is a simple pattern, though the decreases have been a challenge. Usually with lace I put stitch markers between the repeats so that if I screw up it's easier to tell where it happened. It also makes it easier to figure out where to start in the pattern once I've decreased stitches at the beginning of the row. However, here the repeats are staggered and don't start at the same point in each row so I can't mark them. I already had to rip back once, but I think I've got the pattern down pretty well now.

I'm also starting to look at more new projects. We're having quite a harsh winter here in the Northeast - in fact, I'm writing this mid-blizzard - and my office has been freezing. (One of my co-workers actually crocheted a whole slew of fingerless mitts to keep at all the service desks for everyone to share.) Usually, my heavier sweaters are reserved for use at home because most buildings I go to in the winter are heated quite generously, but this year something is up with our heat and nobody seems willing to fix it. I've been getting a lot of use out of my heaviest sweaters, but I've only a few of them and they are quite casual. So I'm just going to need to make more.

I realize I won't finish any of them in time to use them this year, and things could totally be different next year, but I've never let reality get in the way of my knitting and I'm not going to start now.

Sunday Knitting

I just want to show you the beginning of the lace panel on my Humboldt Raglan.

I apologize for the photo quality and the fact that you can't actually see the lace very well. It's the best I can do, given that I'm supposed to be cooking brunch for my book group right now.

One of the reasons I liked this sweater in the first place is that there's enough lace to make it interesting, but not enough to screw it up. It's a 10-stitch repeat which you do only 3 times. Easy enough!

This is great knitting for movie-watching actually. The lace is just a tiny part of each row and the rest is all stockinette so I barely need to look. Considering the tiny gauge, it's moving along at an unexpectedly quick pace.