Reid and Bess

Ok, I think at some point I promised to show pics of my progress on Reid and Bess so that is what this post is about. Let's start with Reid.

As you will remember I started Reid but it wasn't looking anything like the picture of the finished cardigan. I was assured that blocking would probably fix that, but in all honesty I just had a bad feeling it wouldn't.

I went and bought some Patons Grace (the kind used in the sample) and decided I would start over since I wasn't too far into it anyway. Just in case though, I left what I had on the needles. Here is what I've got thus far with the new venture in Reid:

This is about 38 or 40 rows of the back. I know the picture isn't all that great but I wanted to hold it up so you could see the "holes" of the lace. It's still kind of squished together because I didn't want the stitches to fall of the end of the needle. Here's a close up of the stitch (and please don't point out any mistakes - I know there are some in there but I can't figure out how to tell when I do make one (I know, that's what life lines are for, but at this point I wouldn't know how to begin fixing the mistake anyway being new to lace). The following picture is a close up of the stitches.

The colour is, I believe, lilac but here (at least on my screen) it is looking on the blueish side. Again, the stitches are somewhat scrunched up still because I didn't want them falling off the end of the needle. You can't even really see the pattern yet in the pic, but when you look at the real thing you do see more of the pattern there - a lot more - than last time.

And as for Dainty Bess, I found out what I was doing wrong! It was the yarn overs that had me thrown for a loop. I had done some blog surfing not long ago, and came across Heather's blog and saw that she was doing this same scarf. I had asked if she could show me a picture of her work on it so I could see if I was doing it right. Mine looked nothing like hers, so I knew I must be doing something wrong but had no idea what.

A few emails later she said she couldn't see my yarn overs, but they were there. It turns out that on the purling side I was purling it wrong. I tried the way she said it (in Reid) - at least I think I am doing it the right way because the holes are showing up.

However, I decided since I had about half of the length of the current picture above shows completed, I decided not to rip out and start over. I decided that I would just continue on my merry little way with what I was doing. At least there is some sort of diamondy looking pattern showing. I will do this pattern again, and the next time I will know how to do the yarn overs and my next attempt might turn out right.

In the mean time, I am renaming my version of Dainty Bess. With no disrespect to the author of the pattern, I am naming my version "Messy Bessy".