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.