Fuzzy Logic: Charting 'Dayflower'

Dayflower is a really pretty pattern in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, but it only has written directions. I was looking for a challenge for my charting skills and this one looked like a good one. It took me a while, but I figured it out. Here are some of the steps I used.

Charting 'Dayflower', originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

I photocopied the picture of the Dayflower pattern from Barbara G. Walker's Treasury, then drew circles over the yarn-overs, then blue lines to join the yarn-overs on the same row. Next, I used red lines to show stitch-columns and decreases, referring to the written pattern. Eventually, through several iterations, I transferred this to graph paper. The trick was to find where to distribute the "no stitch" squares in the graph of the pattern.

Straightening out the lines that represent rows, with no regard to spacing of stitches:

Eventually I got to this point where I could arrange the stitches on a chart. The trick there was to figure out, based on the photo and the previous attempt, how to move the rows back and forth for best alignment of the stitch columns.:

Once I had the stitch columns aligned properly vertically, I could do the more-detailed stitch diagram. This one shows the path of the yarn through all the stitches, but not the actual over-and-under crossings of the yarn as the stitches are made. It's a bit sketchy because I only did one half of a repeat, then used Photoshop to flip and copy the repeats, and my Photoshop skills are not the best:

As I've said before, I'd rather figure out 5 ways to diagram a knitting pattern than knit it. I'm all about understanding the architecture...

I am grateful that iLoveButter on Flickr has shared this photo under a Creative Commons license so I can show you the pattern used in a garment (before blocking, which will open up the lace):

Monday, March 08, 2010

Charting 'Dayflower'

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