Welcome back!

This last week I have been swatching like crazy.

I love my stitch dictionaries as they provide instant inspiration. This stitch might conjure images of sweater cuffs, this other one, scarf designs, etc. All the possibilities can be quite overwhelming, jumping out of the page, begging to be turned into a project.

One stitch in particular has been catching my eye lately. I love how the stitches form an open work lattice. The diagonals almost look woven. I swatched this pattern with Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock  medium weight. I also started a swatch with the Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock (not shown), but immediately found it to be too thin.

The pattern itself is rather versatile as it can be worked over (almost) any number of odd stitches. I worked this as a mini shawl swatch to see how it would work with the regular increases (yarn: Dream In Color, Smooshy).

Looks good, except…do you see it? The pattern starts at the top/middle of the neck and expands out and down so that the resulting stitch pattern is on a diagonal. The diagonal lines of the stitch then become vertical and horizontal lines instead. I’m not sure I like that. If I want to use this pattern and care about it’s orientation, one option would be to construct the shawl in a different way.

All shawls I have made have started from the middle neck. However, there are several other ways to make a shawl. I could start at the bottom point and increase on both sides, which would allow me to maintain the original diagonal lines of the mesh. The same would be true for starting from the wide edge, decreasing on both sides down to the point.

After some research on Ravelry, I decided that I don’t really care for most shawls knit in this way. I think maybe the stitch would look better if it were moved out from the start some. Here is a sketch.

The question then arises, what to do with that big empty section at the beginning? The easiest thing would be to work that in garter or stockinette stitch. However, I think I want to do something a little different. I would like to give it some texture without it taking too much away from the mesh stitch. I contemplate using some other lacy pattern, but push this idea away. I’m leaning towards a more modern looking shawlette; something relatively simple and not overly busy – casual.

I conclude that I actually don’t mind the diagonals running vertical and horizontal. And I like the diamond like aspect of the woven mesh. How can I expand that theme?  Back to the stitch dictionaries for diamond or diagonal themes. Two that catch my eye are swatched below.

The bottom one I liked most for its simplicity however, with the slightly variegated yarn the pattern gets lost. The top one stands out more and shares another common theme with the mesh stitch – twisted stitches. It is a little too tall – meaning that I don’t like how many rows the pattern repeat is for. So I decided if I use it, I will have to shorten it a bit.

The next step is to swatch the two patterns together to make sure I like the transition. The diamond theme has a much bigger repeat, but as long as I end with sections with odd numbers, the mesh section will fit in.

Next, I decide that my first sketch is too boring; I want to break it up a bit. With the versatility of the mesh pattern, I can do virtually any number of repeats of the diamond pattern followed by the mesh. Here is another sketch of what I think it will look like.

At this point if I were planning on submitting this project to a magazine, I would have nearly all my materials ready. Armed with swatches and sketches, I would now organize my plan into a proposal document. But since I am self publishing,  it’s time to start knitting!

Next week I will be sharing the grueling* process of knitting the prototype while trying to work out the final pattern. Please feel free to leave your questions and comments and I will address them in my next post as well.

* I say grueling because this part is probably the hardest step in the process, but it is also quite fun. Here is a sneak peek:

Tags: design, Design Series

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 7:39 am and is filed under Design Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.