Hannelore plans

I saw a lovely lace pattern called Hannelore that Lacefreak blogged about. I fell in love!
I wanted, no: 'needed', to get this pattern and knit it just as soon as possible.
NB: there are also lovely pictures at Ars Una, Species Mille's blog.

I looked online, then at ebay, set up a search reminder for 'Burda Spezial E418', googled it again - but no joy. Then I found this project on Ravelry and realised that the pattern had also been published in 'Band 408' (that's volume 408 to you and me) by a company called Beyer Verlag. So back to googling and ebay and any other place I could think of.

Then Amazon posted the item: 'Kunststricken. Decken, Garnituren, Spitzen: Bände 408 und 760', saying: 'Not yet available but can be pre-ordered'. Hah!
Guess what? I did. (Big surprise)

It was supposed to arrive some time in late April if memory serves. It took a little longer - I got it some time in May. I don't mind: this is a treasure!

The two volumes are not bound books, they are more like brochures or folded booklets and come in a wallet that also contains the two sets of charts. And a loose leaf sheet of either errata or supplementing information.

Band 408 has more complicated, highly lacey looking doilies, the items in Band 760 are a little more robust looking, if that makes any sense. These patterns do not seem quite as complex with more stockinette stitch in them. The items in both are really lovely!

My Hannelore pattern that I was so desperate for turns out to be quite small. I must check Lacefreak's blog entry again to see how big you can get this if you use larger needles - I was rather hoping to be able to wear this as a shawl! The size in the book is that of a cushion cover, not quite what I had in mind!

I am playing around with yarn choices and have not yet decided what to use (my Silkbloom Extra Fino from BC Garn would be quite nice?) - I have this in undyed as well as my usual choice of strong pinks.
There are so many projects in these volumes I want to make that I started a medium sized one first: Image 20 on page 12 (I didn't find a name for this). I will post about this soon.

In the meantime, here's what the Silkbloom yarn looks like:

PS: I just realised that I didn't mention that these patterns are by a gentleman called Herbert Niebling. I think he was a genius! I've even found a picture* of him again (plus mini bio. He's not on Wikipedia!), though it took some doing - searching Google Images for his name brings up millions of doilies!

*: I just love that pot of Alpenveilchen on his table (on a balcony?) that he is apparently using to weigh the chart down! How endearing is that...

And very dapper he is too: the glasses and clothes are very 1950s/60s Germany.