A few days ago, I was approached by colorlessblue. She had a pretty sock pattern made up of triangles, but it required her to use exactly 64 stitches around.

Her difficulty was that she couldn't find a gauge in which that worked. Me first reaction was to say, "well, that's not a big deal, the pattern is trivial to make fit on a multiple of 12 or 14 stitches." Then I tried to explain what stitches to remove, and it really quickly became messy.

So I stopped for 15 minutes or so and drew a few patterns. As I started, she clarified that she didn't want to purl.

This is what resulted:

However, the absence of purl stitches meant that the resulting pattern would be triangles of vertical knit stitches with a zigzag border of slanted stitches. So, my next thought was, "Why not make the slanted stitches into the motif. That resulted in this pattern: It's not perfect by any means. The k2tog and SSK being next to each other results in a ladder. Were I continuing that tangent, I'd turn all paired decreases into double decreases. Also, as it turns out, I didn't like how the paired yarn overs at the apex of the triangle looked. At the same time as I was thinking that, I also wondered what would happen if the triangles were offset by half a repeat, giving the whole pattern a longer period before it repeats.

This pattern (which is almost the same as a Barbara Walker one) has the property that the knit stitches actually form themselves into vein-like curves: the diamonds end up looking like oval leaves.

I tried knitting it half in knit and half in purl, to see if that would give the leaves more shape, but that ended up being a step too far: The lace lost enough of its definition that the pattern looked awkward and no longer anything like leaves.

I think I'm likely to use this one at some point, possibly as a motif one some leaf-patterned socks that I keep not getting around to. Before I do, I'm likely to put it through one more mutation, reducing it to about half the size and extending the widest part of the leaf by two rows, so that it more accurately matches the shape of a beech leaf.

Most of my charts seem to follow a similar pattern of starting point and progressive mutation, followed by a test knit, correction of discovered problems, a further test knit and possibly correcting steps that went too far.

It's like saying "just one more row", but "just one more change" instead.

I'd be the first to admit that I think of myself as a sock-and-hat knitter. I like my projects the way I... Never mind, I'm not going to finish that chestnut. Suffice it to say that I like my projects small enough that I can always keep the end in sight.

That said, I picked up two bales of wool this week; bulky natural wool in a pleasant brown. Along with that, I expanded what is apparently becoming an Addi collection. Essentially, I've committed to knitting a sweater.

As is my wont, I started by browsing the internet to determine what kind of sweater I wanted, then searching Ravelry for patterns. As usually happens, I got frustrated. Fortunately, Elizabeth Zimmerman has a pattern, described in proportions, for a warm baggy pullover. Less-fortunately, it's steeked. After more research and not a little bit of swearing, I decided to blissfully close my eyes and pay no mind to those instructions. After all, I have many many many stitches between me and slicing two holes into my knitting.

Plenty of time to chicken out and re-think the pattern as two trapezoids sewn together with the arms attached by picking up off the selvedge. Plenty of time to consider that sewing two trapezoids together will be far less solid than biting the bullet and knitting the whole thing as a tapered cylinder.

Plenty of time to knit swatches.

This is what I'm using as a swatch. This pattern, repeated over and over, is intended to make up two front panels of the sweater. The intent is to swatch it to see if it looks right and also to test texture and gauge of the wool and needles. As I'm more than mildly worried that 5mm needles (my preferred size for worsted) will simply be too tiny for bulky.

After only a little bit of discussion and plotting, I realised that the back of the sweater really deserves a different pattern from the front.

Rather than two panels of four-strand braids, the back has a single panel, centred, that makes a twelve-strand braid or knot. Fortunately, this pattern will look pleasing so long as the front panel does, so I only need to knit the one swatch as a test pattern.

In keeping with my three-project rule, I'm not to start a pair of socks or a hat or anything else until I've finished with this swatch. Further, once I've committed to the sweater, that's one of the three available slots for patterns taken up. So, likely, I'll knit the swatch, knit some socks (I have a pattern that I want to try), possibly knit some more socks (I actually have two patterns waiting for me), maybe finish a hat, and then get to the sweater, just in time for it to be too warm out for sweaters.