outtakes

Candle Flames v2: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

Candle Flames v2: a free cable/lace knitting stitch pattern
| Naomi Parkhurst

Last week, I shared a stitch pattern with you that I’d derived from a motif from Ply. This is a variation on last week’s pattern, because I saw that if I changed things around slightly, I could nestle some extra columns in between the first set, shifted just a little bit vertically. A standard term  for this that’s used in pattern design is half-drop. Mathematicians refer to this as an example of translational symmetry. (This kind of symmetry involves sliding copies of a motif around without changing the shape of it.)

Note: this doesn’t count as secret code anymore because it’s been manipulated a lot.

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Road to Paradise: a free lace knitting stitch

| Naomi Parkhurst

This was originally meant as a coordinating stitch pattern for Paradise; I took an excerpt of the original stitch pattern as described here. I don’t know whether it was the yarn or the gauge, but I was having trouble making the decrease lines visible, so I made the background stitches into garter stitches. Aside from the rib columns, however, the wrong side rows are pretty plain.

I am not certain how well this would actually coordinate with Paradise, given the garter background, but it’s worth a try. Feel free to noodle around with it! You could always change it back to stockinette if you like. Or try purling the wrong side rows all the way across. Always feel free to mess with my stitch patterns.

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Skulls: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

Skulls: a free lace knitting stitch pattern
| Naomi Parkhurst

This isn’t secret code. This is the result of starting a secret code swatch back in August and having to start over because there were excellent skull faces in it. (It was not appropriate to have skull faces in that particular context.)

I’ve fiddled a bit with the design – removing the non-skull bits and elongating  the top a bit. I’m not sure the proportions are anatomically correct, but I like the effect, so.

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Étude no. 14: Vertical excerpts

Spark: a free lace knitting stitch to coordinate with wildfire
| Naomi Parkhurst

Immediately after I posted about using a subset of rows from a complex chart as a coordinating stitch pattern, I started wondering about a subset of columns.

This is naturally more complicated, as the decreases and increases have to be balanced out, which means a good deal more fiddling with the stitch pattern. I think it might also be less useful – though it might help with situations where the desired stitch pattern doesn’t quite fit the required width.

Anyway, I decided to play with a chart, knit swatches, and see what happened. If it didn’t work, at least I’d know.

In the end, it took a lot more work and thought to get something satisfactory. This is not necessarily a barrier, but I felt that people considering trying it for themselves should know. (I think this sort of thing is fun; not everybody does.)

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Serendipity heart motif

Serendipity heart : a free knitting stitch motif
| Naomi Parkhurst

I was browsing through the stitch patterns to find an example for an upcoming blog post when my attention was caught by Serendipity. When I designed that stitch pattern, I hadn’t yet started isolating motifs from the larger patterns. I realized that I should pull the heart motif out of the bigger design for you, and here it is.

I wanted all the yarnovers inside the heart, and so I replaced some of the yarnover-and-decrease combinations from the original stitch pattern with 1/1 crosses. This sort of trick comes in very handy sometimes.

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Name That Stitch Pattern: have you seen it before?

Have you seen this stitch pattern before?
| Naomi Parkhurst

This is a ground pattern based on a standard sequence that’s often seen in lace—Barbara Walker remarks upon it. I don’t remember seeing this exact version before, though I have seen one called Alternating Feather that repeats Rows 1&2 several times, and then Rows 3&4 several times. I suppose this probably means that I just haven’t looked in the right places (or that I’ve seen it, but don’t remember it). Are you familiar with it?

I came up with it by playing with lace and sequence knitting. Anyway, I like it and it seemed worth sharing, though it is not in itself sequence knitting. (It turns out that there are extra complications that come with trying to work sequences as lace. Fascinating, but it makes it more difficult.)

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Out of the wild, two free stitch patterns

Out of the wild, a free lace knitting stitch pattern.
| Naomi Parkhurst

When I designed Wild/erness, I was struck by various motifs I saw within it. Reading Creating Original Handknitted Lace by Margaret Stove has given me more confidence about isolating motifs from lace, and so I thought I’d pull them out as stitch patterns in their own right. Caveat: removed from context, these no long qualify as “secret code” but I think they coordinate visually with Wild/erness. (I think it’s funny to include that, but I design more “secret code” stitches than not, so.)

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the Lark in the Morning

| Naomi Parkhurst

And now we see why I showed you how to do the lark’s head stitch in my last post! Here’s a free stitch pattern for you, just in time for Valentine’s Day. This combination of yarnovers came up as part of a draft secret code stitch pattern I’m putting together. It’s not meant as secret code by itself though. I just lifted it out of a larger stitch pattern because I liked the little hearts. Secret: I don’t usually like hearts.

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