Crocus Stitch

One of the "improvements" I wanted to make to the offset pattern in the last post, was to condense the increases. Instead of six yarnovers spaced out around five knit stitches, I decided to try putting them all in and around one stitch, ie. yo, (k1, yo, k1, yo, k1) in the same st, yo. This still adds six stitches, but they are pushed closer together and, more importantly, some of them are solid. The result is quite pretty.

 

 Here's a closeup.

The chart needs some explaining. Those black squares mean "No Stitch"; they are placeholders. In order to design this particular pattern, I needed to "break open" the chart it was derived from. That was the only way I could see which increases are "consumed" by which decreases and how they line up. You can almost see the crocus shapes in the chart!

Now, this pattern retains the same stitch count throughout, so I could have eliminated the black squares. I did start doing just that, but the chart was clearly less effective that way, so I give you the expanded chart.

One last consideration is selvedges. The (k1, yo, k1) in the same stitch at the ends of Row 7 creates a cute little "picot". If the picots are blocked impeccably, they create a nice outer edge. I haven't quite decided what to do for a selvedge for seaming, though. Certainly that would require an extra stitch at each edge; I'm just wondering if those nice indentations would remain open or if I would need to do some sort of yarnover-decrease maneuver. (My "To Try" list just got a bit longer!)

Until next time.

Offset Pattern

In Old Shale, the pattern is achieved by stacking the yarnovers in one column and stacking the decreases in another. One thing I wanted to do was take the elements and alternate them instead. I continued with six yarnovers and condensed decreases with the outer ones slanting towards the central stitch. The result is the swatch shown to the right. Its structure reminds me a bit of filet crochet; I think that effect might be more obvious if I had used sl2-k1-p2sso for all the decreases. Yet another thing for my "to try" list.

Here is the chart for this version. The symbols are the same as in the previous post.

As I was working on the swatch, I kept thinking that it was just a jumble with no real character. You can see from the "before" picture why I would think that. I'm delighted by how nicely it opened up with blocking, but before that I had already thought of a couple of "improvements". One of those will be featured in the next post. Until then . . .