I've been working out a pattern for a fairly complicated lace item. I could just use stitches from stitch dictionaries and leave it at that, but that can be very limiting, because not all those stitches work together nicely.
So I came up with about what I wanted the item to do, pattern-wise, and I've been writing my own stitch patterns for it. Not as hard as it might seem, as I can look at charted patterns in dictionaries when I need to figure out how to make something happen. But not all smooth sailing.
Examples:
First I give you a pattern I call "fish scales," which looks like a million other patterns like this only had to be an annoying one stitch wider to mesh with a later pattern. I was fussing with this on BART and busses for several weeks before I felt it came out right (you can see on the left that I had to move some things around even in later iterations). The last repeat came out exactly as I wanted it.
But this pattern is a mess. I want it to naturally grow out of the fish scales, but now it looks like a horrifying growth. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm using crochet cotton to do this work in, and storing it crumpled up in pockets. But also the line stitches are looking less linelike and more twisted braid, and I'm unsure about whether I want to have those nupps in there at this point in the object.I may have to significantly change this pattern to get it to come out right.
I am really enjoying this process, though. I've already had a few nights of staying up way too late because I got so into working out a chart.
Have I been doing anything other than fiber arts and tearing my house apart? Not really.
