White Diamond Bookmark

First note, the bookmark is actually white, not this strange pinkish-tan it is showing up on my monitor! (Goodness knows what it looks like on yours!)

For some reason, knitting on the white linen bookmark took right off. The brown linen leaf one is languishing, waiting its turn.

I call myself a "visual" learner, but that is using the word "see" in the sense of "Let me see it!" Palm out, waiting to see it by holding it in my hand. I learn to see things in knitting by doing them, feeling them on the needles in my fingers. I know intellectually, and from trying lace knitting on my knitting board, that stitches lean toward a decrease and away from an increase. But I am learning to see this by doing it on needles. My hands have to learn it.

On the knitting board this is very logical: in order to make a decrease, you pick up a loop from one peg and stack it on or under another. The loop you move naturally leans towards the peg it was moved to, and away from the peg it was taken off of.

In this diamond bookmark I have been learning this by trying it. Each diamond is slightly different. I moved the decreases so stitches would slant, or not slant. I switched from two single decreases to one double decrease. I slipped a stitch or didn't slip it, so I could see how it looked open or twisted.

I didn't really get this pattern from anywhere. I am reading Barbara Abbey's "Knitting Lace". But I didn't get the pattern from there. I'd like to bite either Barbara Abbey, or her 1970's editors, for letting her re-invent knitting notation for the book. There are some nice-looking samples in there, and then I see mysterious things like "f, 00" that supposedly explain how to knit the sample, and I want to bite.

It is hard enough to learn common knitting notation cold. (Believe me: I've only just learned it!) Then to have to learn another complete system, that is only used in one book! [rolling eyes]

So what I did was, I saw an insertion with diamonds in the book. I took a pencil and a piece of graph paper and made "O"s where I wanted the yarnovers. Then I put my decreases where I wanted to try them. For the next diamond, I erased and moved them.

I'm thinking I'll knit two more diamonds, and call this one done.