Well, the idea of Lace Patterns Good For Striping Yarns keeps rattling around in my head. I'd like to compile a list. I think a more comprehensive list would require perusal of my Barbara Walker treasuries and such, but I do know of some lace patterns that work well, or some sock patterns that exist using lace.

(Perhaps I am reinventing the wheel here and some person more clever than I - like Eunny Jang for example - has already got a book out on this very topic. Please don't be TOO snarky to me when you comment to tell me so.)

It seems many of the Shetland patterns would work well - I think the requirements for a lace pattern "working" is that it be an allover pattern - not one that attempts to make a "picture" with the yarnovers (because they get obscured by the striping). I think also laces where the "return" row is plain (that is, the "return row" were you knitting flat - it would be a purl row that of course translates to a knit row knit in the round, because the "return rows" would be the wrong side) would work better.

Patterns where there are paired yo's and dec's, with a "central" double decrease, would work well, because they give that "biaseyness" (yes, I just made up another word) that makes the striping yarns "undulate" in their stripes - and makes them more interesting.

I also think - and this is a matter of personal preference - but patterns that are not TOO "open" are best for socks. When it's cold enough where I live to wear socks, it's fairly cold, and for me, I prefer to have something a bit more substantial than the handknit equivalent of fishnets.

This is not an exhaustive list here but this is a few I thought of:

1. Feather and Fan. You could probably easily figure something up but the Socks^3 book from XRX press has a version. You can also make good old F&F wider or narrower (by changing the yarnover and decrease numbers). I like this pattern because it's pretty, easily remembered, and it's just comfortable to work. (there is also a toe-up version, available online as a .pdf file here)

2. Razor shell - another Shetland pattern. An example of socks knit with this is here
(Free pattern link on the sidebar; it exists as a .pdf file). This is one I want to make sometime.

3. Crest O' the Wave. I've used this one for socks (picture here) and been quite happy with it.

4. What I would call "variants on Razor Shell." Broadripple, from Knitty, would fit this category - basically, any pattern with a "double decrease" in the center, and then paired yarn overs and decreases on either side. I've also seen a sock pattern like this in one of the "Not Just Socks" series of books.

(Perhaps I am not searching using the right term, but I am failing to turn up either a list of "traditional" Shetland stitches, or charts for lace. I will add to this list of potential lace patterns for stripy yarns later, when I've had a chance to "go meatspace" and look at my books).


I am not sure that patterns with a strong "vertical" aspect to them (like Hedera from Knitty - and please disregard the extremely creepy fact that it's shown on a disembodied mannequin leg) work as well, unless you have a very subtle striping yarn, because most of the stripy yarns are very strongly HORIZONTAL, and I think combining a yarn with a strong horizontal pattern with a lace that has a strong vertical aspect - well, you might get something kind of like when tv sets used to have that "vertical hold" button, and you'd mess with it, when you were a kid, because it made your dad kind of mad, but not TOO mad, and it was funny to see the football players or Louis Rukeyser or whoever flipping around on the screen? That's what I think a stripy yarn and a vertical-based pattern would do. I could be wrong.

(Oh - and here's another lace link for you: Beginner's guide to knitting heirloom lace. And it's from the UK, y'all, where they KNOW lace knitting.)

And another link I found Designer JoLene Treace has her own weblog. (Well, of course. I will once again reiterate: were Andy Warhol alive today, he'd amend his famous "fifteen minutes of fame" statement to be "In the future, everyone will have a weblog.") But it looks like this is a "meatier" one than some, not so much "Look at this pattern that you can BUY NOW from me" as it is "here are thoughts about the design process"