Thrills and Spills with Sticks and String

All the buttons for the second vest done, needing only attachment. And the shoulders to be seamed, I've been eyeing some nice fingering in variegated color and wondering what to make next.

Also, leafing through Big Binder of stuff I've done, remembered I had a lot of pages of Barbara Walker's book of lace patterns. Found them after an exciting search during which I found a couple of ideas for future art projects, and thought, hm.

Then in line with my usual mantra of when in doubt, do everything at once, cast on 36 stitches on size three dpns, and studied lace patterns. I decided a long scarf as a lace sampler would be just the ticket.

So I picked out a few, noticed I'd done more of them than I realized, and I'll do panels of different patterns separated by areas of garter stitch.  This is interesting as a scarf and as a walking textbook of design. And the 36 stitches are enough to accommodate the patterns, some needing garter stitches to fill in the sides. Can you see feather and fan there, and bird's-eye? And there's ladder lace to come, too. Forthcoming attractions.

Started with kelp stitch, an old one from my big binder, which means I must have made it for someone, and found quite quickly that the picture and the words didn't match up.  As you see, the openings stagger nicely, but there's a panel of garter stitch which doesn't match the pic.  I studied and realized that the pattern omitted a vital clue: it said the motif was k2 (yo k2tog) k2. The alternating, jog row, was k1(yo k2tog) k 3. As you see, as written, it will give that intervening band of garter stitch. It looks quite nice, but it's not what I was going for.

Rethinking, I figured it should have said k2 *(yok2tog) to last 2 then k2. There was a missing asterisk.

 

So I did another panel like that and yay, that's the answer. I really like the pattern now. There will be more lacy bits as I go, but, being from Barbara Walker's collection, there won't be any pesky typos to deal with.

So I already have a reference with the pattern as written and as corrected. It's already working as a textbook.  Amazing what two different readings can do to the result.


This is fun.