The word I drew from my word hoard for this stitch pattern is Sweetheart, suggested by Rebecca on Patreon. Sometimes in the past when I’ve had a word with smaller words as part of it, I’ve encoded them as multiple stitch patterns that could be combined to make a bigger one. Because sweetheart is longer than my usual words, and since it would therefore take rather longer than usual, I decided not to do this. So I was amused when I picked this particular code layout to realize that the encoding splits in the perfect place to turn this into two more coordinating stitch patterns! I guess it was bound to happen. I haven’t yet swatched sweet and heart separately; I’ll be doing that for my regular blog posts over the next couple of weeks.

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. I make two of these into knitting stitches each month: the first is drawn from the collection of new words; the second is drawn from the collection of unused words. A random number generator helps me choose these, and then I get to work, first turning the letters into numbers, then charting the numbers onto grids in various ways. Finally, when I make the chart into lace, I turn the marked squares into yarnovers and work out where to place the corresponding decreases. (I usually make lace; occasionally I make cables instead.) I also make a chart for any craft that uses a square grid for designing; this goes in a separate post.

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This month, the random number generator chose the word Mermaid, suggested by Ange on Patreon. This was a nice coincidence: a lot of artists who post on social media were making art about mermaids through the month of May. (The hashtag for this is #MerMay – it started on Instagram, but I have also seen it on Twitter and Mastodon. It’s probably elsewhere too!) Of course, it’s June now, but at least I did the designing in May!

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. A random number generator helps me choose a word every two weeks, and then I get to work, first turning the letters into numbers, then charting the numbers onto grids in various ways. Finally, when I make the chart into lace, I turn the marked squares into yarnovers and work out where to place the corresponding decreases. (I usually make lace; occasionally I make cables instead.) I also make a chart for any craft that uses a square grid for designing; this goes in a separate post.

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