knitting: designing lace medallion & placement of increases

[sev]

I'm designing a lace medallion with six-fold symmetry. According to "Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns", this means that I should be increasing once-per-section, every-other-round, for a total of six increases every two rounds.

If in each section I decrease once and then increase twice, every two rounds, is that going to interfere with the knitting's flatness? The total number of stitches increased over the two rounds is still 6.




this pattern would be repeated 6 times for a circle; I'd also want it to behave itself repeated 3 times for a half circle. Rows 1-22 are a more simple stockinette-based lace with regular every-other-round increases.

(x-posted to knitting)

Comments

[firecat]

OOO!

I'm knitting a mostly stockinette shawl with YOs and K2togs, and the part where my increases and decreases don't match does appear to be non-flat. I expect the answer depends partly on how many different kinds of stitches you use, especially stretchy ones like YOs.

[grettaelizabeth.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I'm not sure if my other attempt to comment on this post worked or not, so I'll try again.

I think that it will depend on your tension. If you use a lightweight yarn on biggish needles, it should be just fine. If your tension is tighter, though, it might try to snarl up on you a bit.

Your pattern doesn't look too complicated so I'm guessing it will knit up quickly. I say just go for it and see what happens! It'll be educational at the very least. And please post pictures, good or bad!

[krazycrafter.livejournal.com]

Sorry to tell you but your chart is not working in several ways,

First most charts start with 1 on the bottom and read up for the lines. This is not a fatal problem but one that has had lead you the the bigger one.

If you count your stitches on line 23, you have 12 boxes where you then increase 3 and decrease 4. That should leave you with 11...
Then, on the next row, you somehow have 14 boxes...

You understand what i am talking about? The pattern as labeled does not work because you have people decreasing where you want them increasing.

[sev]

For the top-down -- I'm designing in Excel, which insists on moving up and to the left when I delete things. As rearranging the fifty-some-odd rows by hand was a pain, I've been desgning top-down with an eye to reversing it programmatically when I'm done. Do you have any tips for working bottom-up in the design phase?

[sev]

I'm confused about your stitch counts. Line 23 has 12 boxes because when it is completed there are 12 stitches on the needle. Row 22 (not on this chart) had 13 stitches, and then I k1, skp, yo, k2tog, k2, skp, yo, k2tog, k1, yo, k1 for a total of 12 stitches.

Row 24 has 14 stitches -- 12 knits from the row before, plus two YOs.

Do you mean that you want the chart to have a blank box (for "no stitch") somewhere on row 23 to show that there's an unpaired decrease on that row? Or is it just that the chart is confusing because rows 1-22 are missing?