Oak leaves and acorns

I have been knitting on this lace rug for the past six weeks now. I became fasinated with the designs by Herber Niebling about two years ago. I had to learn to read charts in German, no less. ..but I have to say I had lots of help.

There are some great knitting ladies out there. The Rainy Sisters, helped me to understand the "Hemlock Ring" and Glenda Hunt was so gracious to help also. This was my first try at lace knitting. I was able to finish that lovely blanket in wool and I just love it.

I joined Ravelry and the Yahoo knitting group and really learned a lot.

I found that knitting lace in the fine threads can be quite difficult for a beginner, to lace knitting, so I decided to use an 8 ply cotten for this "Oak leaf and acorn" pattern.

Instead of a doily, I wanted a rug in lace. Here is a close-up of the leaves.

Close-up of leaves and acorn. This was a fun project. I marked my repeats and counted each repeat before I moved on to the next and I did find mistakes to fix.

If you are a knitter, you will remember when the Nieblings were discovered and the web and ebay was going crazy with them and ebay was making a killing on these pattern. Some of those patterns went for hundreds of dollars. You can now get some of these patterns (the one above was free from a website) from a company called "Lacis".

The ladies on the web, at the time, were knitting "Lyra", also by Niebling. I started to knit it in the fine threads and gave up. I decided I needed to start at the bottom lol....so now I think I am ready to knit Lyra. I will knit her in cotten also.