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.
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.)
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.
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.)
I’ve done one last set of outtakes from Wilderness. I found a five-petaled flower shape in it, and I haven’t seen many of those out there. I particularly like the way the mini cable makes the space between the petals into a symmetrical star.
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.)
