Lace is more....

Conventional wisdom has it that knitting heavy woolens when the weather's warm isn't entirely pleasant. I suppose if there's no access to trade winds or a/c this is so. Anyway, if an excuse is needed to embark on a knitted lace project, it's too hot to knit an aran sweater is as good as any.

Which brings me to Brooke Nico's new book, Lovely Knitted Lace (Lark Publishing, 2014).

If you're the kind of knitter who's intimidated by the L word, this book is for you. Nico's approach is calming and rational. She organizes patterns by essential shapes--triangles, rectangles, circles, squares--so that the knitter isn't necessarily thinking about the project line by line. The psychological benefits of the geometric approach are palpable. There's a vision in place that allows the knitter to focus on intermediate and long-range goals--how a garment can be viewed as the joining of triangles or rectangles, how its form as a whole is a shaped statement rather than a string of disjointed phrases.

So it's summer now, and you could get started on something light and ethereal, like the"Angel Shawl."

How could you not love a pattern of which its designer says, "this shawl makes use of the pizza wedges concept of shaping"? Especially since, in the end, you have something decidedly more gorgeous than a pizza! (Hard to imagine, I know.) This might be my favorite pattern in the book, though all the designs, from cowls to sweaters, have great merit.

The publisher has made available a giveaway copy of Lovely Knitted Lace. If you'd like it, post a comment telling me why, before midnight on Thursday June 5th 2014.  Kramer the Haruspex will help me select the winner.