Lace knitting charts from 17 and 18 years ago

Cover of Charted Knitting Designs

Anybody interested in test-knitting some lace designs I made? These are patterns I made up and charted about eighteen years ago, but never got around to copy-editing or test-knitting. They are similar to some of Barbara G. Walker's designs in Charted Knitting Designs. They are a tad more symmetrical, since I use twist stitches to balance out the decreases on the other side of the yarnovers.

The patterns are similar to the ones I designed and used in my wall-hanging called Lace Curlicues:



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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):

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"Walkerized" decreases

Barbara Walker started the whole thing when she changed slip-one-knit-one-pass-slip-stitch-over (sl1-k1-psso) to slip-slip-knit (ssk). Did you know that most decreases can be modified in a simi­lar way? 

For example, the most common way to do a double decrease when you want the decrease to slant gently to the right is “ssk, return the stitch thus formed to the left-hand needle, then pass the next unworked stitch over the stitch just worked, then pass the just-worked stitch again to the right-hand needle.” A Walker-style modification of that de­crease would be as follows. “Slip two stitches separately as if to knit.[1] Insert the left-hand needle into both stitches togeth­er from the right and transfer them back to the left hand needle.[2] Then knit three together.” You may find that, once learned, this is a faster way to do the stitch.

Suppose you want a double de­crease gently slanting to the left? The traditional way: “slip one stitch as if to knit. Knit two together. Pass the slipped stitch over the k2-tog.” The Walkerized decrease is very similar to ssk: “Slip one knitwise. Slip two as if to k2-tog. Insert left hand needle into the front of the three slipped stitches and knit them all together.” 

Instead of having three mo­tions, one to slip an old stitch, one to pull a new stitch through, and one to pass a slipped stitch over, you now have two: slip stitches, and pull the yarn through.

Notice a pattern? The basic idea is to perform all of the slipping of stitches first, lining them up, then pull the new stitch through. Try this for a central dou­ble decrease: “Slip two as if to k2-tog, slip one knitwise, then insert l. h. needle into all 3 stitches and knit them together.”



[1]this straightens out the two stitches so that they don’t knit crossed.

[2]this motion is the mirror-image of “slipping two stitches as if to k2-tog,” which is used when you want to make a central two stitch decrease.