For the past week or so I've been endeavouring to make my own lace kerchief pattern. I found one that I love - a very simple mesh that requires no chart, just a simple memorisation; and when it's blocked it looks amazing in its simplicity - but, I want something I can call my own. Something original I wouldn't feel bad about selling in my store. (I tweaked the aforementioned pattern to fit my preferences but am still coming up against an ethical wall.) So I got out the graph paper and looked through all of my stitchionaries and settled upon a leaf lace motif. Converting it to a tip-up triangular shape was a little tricky at first, but once I could see the pattern taking shape on the paper (and could see where my increases matched my decreases) - and I had begun knitting it at least six or seven times - I found my rhythm. I used a DK weight wool, and when I blocked it I used my brand new blocking wires. What a godsend these things are - it was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to thread them through the edge of the knitting, but once I had a wire in all three edges, it took minimal pinning to keep everything in place. So much simpler than trying to get everything straight on the blocking mat with about a zillion and one pins!
Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product (minus ribbon ties). I still have a couple of things to tweak within the chart itself but I'm still sort of patting myself on the back for converting a stitch pattern I thought was nice into an actual item (now - to try and do the same with a stitch pattern for a hat... eek).
