There is only one stitch pattern (so far*) that I've used more than once in my designs, and it is the "Seaweed" pattern from Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  It i

I've never been a sock knitter; my small projects of preference are hats and baby knits. And fall, of course, is a fine time to think about hat knitting (and thus for designers, a fine time to think about creating some hat patterns). I had noted the stitch pattern at left (from the Japanese book Knitting Patterns Book 250) back in the spring, and it struck me as something that could be adapted into an interesting hat. I went so far as to work on adapting the leaf motif to fit within the limited number of rows possible on a hat (deciding on a sport weight yarn to get a few more rows in) and charting the crown decreases, and then shelved that project over the summer to work on other things. Non sono stata mai una maglierista dei calzini; i miei progetti piccoli preferiti sono i cappelli e le maglie dei bambini. Certo che l'autunno e un bel periodo per pensare di lavorare a maglia dei cappelli! Ho visto quello disegno (dal libro giapponese Knitting Patterns Book 250) nella primavera, e pensavo di usarlo per un cappello. I went back to that hat project last week, but after a bit of swatching, I wasn't happy with the result, and returned to my Japanese stitch pattern books for more inspiration. I found the second stitch pattern in the same book as the first, and the final one in the book Knitting Patterns Book 300. I imagined using the second one in a top-down design, so I then started figuring out a series of crown increases that would segue nicely into the main stitch pattern. Sono ritornata la settimana scorsa a quello progetto del cappello; pero', dopo un po' di swatching, non ero contenta, e sono tornata ai miei libri di modelli giapponesi per l'inspirazione. Ho trovato il disegno secondo nello stesso libro come il primo, e l'ultimo nel libro Knitting Patterns Book 300. Ho immaginato di usare il secondo in un modello top-down, quindi ho cominciato di calcolare gli aumenti, i quali progredirebbero nel disegno proprio. This turned out to be a several-days-long process! More on that later.Diventava un processo di parecchi giorni! Piu a piu tardi.

I can find colors I like within every hue of the rainbow-- but that doesn't mean I want to wear them all at once.  So unfortunately my enthusiasm for this Filatura di Crosa "Dusk" yarn, colorway #5, waned as I knit a

In one of the comments on my last post, Janet asked if I could direct her to some posts about the Selva Skirt.  There is a category for it (look on the lower right hand part of the page), but there aren't many posts to be found, simply because the Selva Skirt pattern was created for publication in a magazine, and hence was unbloggable before publication. Well, it's after publication now, and since at least one person is interested in how Selva came about, I thought I would provide a few details.  I often look through stitch dictionaries for inspiration, and in this case, the skirt was absolutely inspired by the stitch pattern, Hearts of Oak from Barbara Walker's Fourth Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  I thought the texture of this stitch pattern was fascinating, and after swatching, I thought its density would be perfect for a fitted knit skirt that would hide a few posterior, shall we say, imperfections.  (Plus I hate wearing G-strings-- not required for Selva, ladies!)  Also, as I recall (the themes that Interweave provided to designers for the Winter 2007 issue are no longer online), one of the suggested themes for that issue was tailored, fitted garments, which seemed perfect for Selva.  Above is the wrong side of the swatch I sent off to Interweave Knits with my pattern submission, back in February '07; the photo is crap because it was an afterthought, taken with my cellphone camera in my car just before I put the submission materials in the mail. While swatching, I also found that the Hearts of Oak chart has a number of errors.  The most important part of the chart, the pattern repeat, is correct, but the outer edges of the chart are not.  Always be aware that errors may be (and probably are) present in published charts and patterns! In the case of this stitch pattern, I debated which side to use for the right side; both sides are really cool.  One reason I decided to go with the "right" side was the waistband.  As I was swatching, I had started to think about how I would do the waistband decreases, and had concluded two things:  first, that working the decreases into the stitch pattern would require a better mind than mine, and second, switching to a less dense stitch pattern, like stockinette or ribbing or, well, just about anything, would mean losing that nice tight fabric just when it would be great to have a bit of a girdle effect, across the tummy and hips.  So after examining both sides of the swatch, I decided that the V-shaped knit sections on the right side were just begging to be extended into long ribbons to form the waistband, and with some experimenting, I came up with what you see at the top of the above swatch:  the ribbons include decreases and increases, and thus retain at least some of the density of the Hearts of Oak pattern. Next:  The evolution of Selva's design after she was accepted by Interweave Knits for their Winter 2008 issue.

(I've decided to start adding some Italian translations; I thought it would be good practice for me, plus I just joined the Knitters in Europe webring, and, I don't know, multilingual is good.  Please feel free to correct me if your Italian is better than mine!)

Well, Jeri, that is a very good question, and one which I had asked myself--and why doesn't Maple Seed swirl in the opposite direction, since it uses left-slanting decreases (SSKs) instead of right-slanting decreases (k2tog)? The stitch pattern for Beaufort originally caught my attention because it was so similar to one segment of Chinese Lace, and I had even MORE questions about the latter.  Why do the first two segments, rows 1-4 and 5-8 on the chart, slant to the left, even though the YOs slant to the right, and the decreases slant both left and right?  Why are the third and sixth segments, rows 9-12 and 21-24, essentially vertical, in spite of slanting YOs and decreases slanting both left and right?  And why do the remaining segments, rows 13-16 and 17-20, slant to the right, even though the YOs slant to the left?  Is it the proximity of YOs and decreases?  Well, I must admit that the main conclusion I had drawn from Chinese Lace was that the direction of decreases and the position of YOs does not always determine the slant of a stitch pattern--or lack thereof.  And this was confirmed by my experience with Beaufort and Maple Seed. But to return to Jeri's question, there are two different kinds of swirls going on in these hats:  one is the spiral at the crown, and the other is the diagonal that the stitch pattern creates, which would exist even if the knit fabric was flat.  First, why does the stitch pattern spiral at the crown?  I had noticed the same phenomenon in Grumperina's Odessa hat pattern.  I know that I did nothing in the way of decreases to create the spiral at Beaufort's crown; in fact, I reworked those decreases a number of times, not only to create the most consistently decreasing shapes within the knit columns, but also to keep the natural spiral as smooth as possible. We've already noted that Beaufort's stitch pattern moves at an angle from the bottom edge--which is a circle, since it's a hat.  If you picture a hat as a series of concentric circles, and the line crossing the circles at left shows the angle of B's stitch pattern, you can see that as the circles get smaller, and the line continues to cross each one at the SAME angle as the first, it begins to curve in a spiral. As for what causes that angle, if you look closely at the photo of Beaufort, you can see that the decreases for each 4-row pattern repeat form the shape of a triangle, (I'll call these the "decrease triangles", colored gray in the above diagram), while the corresponding YOs form--roughly-- an upside-down triangle that fits next to the first (white in the diagram; the purled areas are represented by the squiggly lines).  Thus begins the Beaufort swirl, but what causes it to continue is that the left lower corner of each subsequent decrease triangle sits on the apex of the decrease triangle below, forming a diagonal line. Clear?  Unclear?  Agree?  Disagree?  The floor is open for discussion.

Although I've been knitting furiously for the past week, little or none of it has been bloggable (bad news).  However, by next week, I should have 2 or 3 completed pattern submissions to send off to knitty in time for the deadline for their July issue (good news).  My limited experience with submissions for publication, whether print or online, has been that rejections are to be expected (bad news).  I've heard that knitty's editor, Amy Singer, at least lets you know quickly whether your pattern will be used (good news), and if NOT (bad news), then I will be posting those patterns here on my blog, instead (good news). I haven't given up on Chinese Lace, and the other day I was flipping through the yellowing pages of 1500 Patterns, a softcover "Knitting Encyclopedia" from Mon Tricot that I've had for about 20 years, when I found this.  Look familiar?  Aside from using k2togs instead of SSKs, it is a block of four pattern lines from Chinese Lace, and that lovely diagonal has me thinking I might resurrect this idea--or at least the mock wrap part of it, combined with C.L. sleeves.

Now, it so happens that I am half Chinese, but that's not why I like this lace pattern--and although it's nice that anything so lovely has the word "Chinese" in the name, I'm not sure this means that the pattern actually originated in China.  (It was contributed to BW's 2nd Treasury by one Marjorie B. Bialkowski, Richmond, VA, so perhaps she could tell us its provenance.  I'm curious about the many contributors to BW's Treasuries, by the way.  Are they knitters, designers, historians?  Marjorie is only one of many:  a few others are Leona Hughes, Sarasota, FL; Pauline Balbes, Hollywood, CA; Dorothy Reade, Eugene, OR; and the prolific  Hildegarde M. Elsner, Aldan, PA, who must be either a remarkable innovator, or a compulsive pattern collector.) But I digress.  Here is the entire page from BW, including her (or rather, M.B. Bialkowski's) directions for Chinese Lace.  It is a 24-row repeat and quite enjoyable to work--but it's kind of hard to get a sense of where the pattern is going from the written directions.    So I charted the pattern.  I really like working from charts; not only do you get a better sense of how the pattern is constructed and how it progresses, but it then becomes simple to work in the round if you wish.  One thing you don't get from either set of directions (but which is visible in the photo) is how the decreases and increases pull the lace so that it curves gently from side to side.  (Note:  When I converted the charts into jpg format, some of the YO symbols came out looking rather bizarre; the horseshoe-shaped thingies as well as the circles mean:  YO!)  

I found this photo on newyorkmetro.com, accompanying an article on spring 2006 fashion: Now that Oliver is done, I need a new project; I've noticed the 2006 spring collections seem to be using a lot of lace, and while I'm certainly NOT inclined to knit a filmy nightgown for myself, a silk or cotton top with lace sleeves or maybe just cuffs, or hem or panels or frills around the neckline or LACE ALL OVER [slap]....  Okay, I'm okay now.   Guess I've been bitten by that lace bug or come down with lace madness, or something.  Anyway, when I saw "Chinese Lace," in Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury of Knitting Patterns, it was love at first sight...although now that I am examining it more closely, I'm wondering if I couldn't get rid of those thick cords and just repeat the panels of undulating...petals?  (Isn't that always how it goes?  At first, everything about the object of your love is perfect, but eventually, you can see that there are certain areas which could be changed improved, um, perfected even more.  Than they already were.)   

Well, the husband has chosen his scarf, and it's not the Pinnacle Chevron pattern, nor the lovely Trendsetter "Kashmir" yarn.  It's the one based on the "seaweed" pattern from Barbara Walker'