On Following Directions

As I was looking for something else to knit the other day, I went paging through Andrea Kunststricken Sonderheft, 0802, and I noticed that three of the charts in it were Christine Duchrow charts.

They're very distinctive charts, with their rs for knit stitches (from the German rechts) and IIs for yarnovers.

I hunted through my Christine Duchrow books until I found all three.

Duchrow 81.5:
Duchrow 81.8:
And Duchrow 73.5:But what was the matter with the knitted example in the photo?

The original 73.5 photo showed two large holes at the end of each flower petal, and a border of lacy little holes.

I had to knit and find out.

This pattern has not one, not two, but eight notes relating to different chart lines. Some are obvious things like knitting three plain rows following a pattern row. Others are a lit-tle more involved.

The points of the petals are formed by knitting 16 stitches alternating with 15 triple yarnovers in one row, then in the next row, dropping those yarnovers, elongating the 16 stitches, and knitting all 16 together into one stitch!

Just to make that whole process more fun, before and after the whole dropping-a-triple-yarnover process, you also make two new triple yarnovers before and after the petal point to form the two large holes. Wow.Creating the lacy border involves moving the start of the round by one stitch in three different rows. If you skip those moves, you end up with the laddered border in the Andrea photo.

If you follow the directions, you get the lacy holes that match the original photo. So important sometimes, following directions!