Chart it, swatch it and see!
While learning from the Craftsy Class: Lace Shawl Design, with Miriam Felton, I followed her instructions to go to stitch dictionaries to find patterns for particular motifs. In this case, I was looking for "leaves."
I found so many variations of leaves and noticed the designers use one of two ways to delineate a leaf on a background: with yarn-overs that produce holes around the leaf, or with purl stitches that raise a stockinette stitch leaf above the ground with yarn-overs accenting the center vein.
A good example of the latter method is illustrated in a free pattern from the website: Knitwise Girl, and can be found here.
Would that work for a hat, knitting on the right side, in the round?
First, I knit a swatch that included 4 pattern repeats, and one and a half row repeats.
I wanted to work several rows as illustrated, then eliminate the half-drop repeat that fell between two leaves to add shaping to the fabric, to create a crown for the hat.
Using the written instructions I created a chart, but in doing so, I made the error of reading the even-numbered row (WS) from right to left. It didn't matter, until row 15, and while looking for a solution, I scrolled down and saw the author's chart below instructions, as well as a link to watch the video on YouTube.
"When all else fails . . ."
Here is the original chart by Christine (aka Knitwise Girl)
How many leaves do you see?
At first I thought I saw three: one whole one in the middle, and one on either side. But that was my brain having a mind of its own and making the leap to make me believe I saw more than was there.
Now look at the chart after I ruled out the purl stitch border:
There are only two leaf motifs, neither of them shown as a whole image. That is why it's helpful to make your own chart, and expanding it as much as you need to see a 'whole motif."
When you have a half-drop surface design, you will have some half motifs within a square or rectangle. Miriam Felton recommends swatching at least 4 repeats of a pattern from a dictionary (which are often charted in a rectangle, and knit flat.)
The chart after isolating the leaves to decide how to modify the pattern for shaping:
Here I have 'decresed' 2 stitches in row 9 and 10, 4 stitches rows 11 and 12 - progressing to having decreased 8 stitches per half-pattern row repeat, just by not doing the yarn-overs.
But I wanted that purl border to be yet narrower. By doing a decrease on either side of the middle, I can cut down the number of stitches from 5 to 3.
I tried a center-double-decrease in the swatch, but it didn't give me the appearance I wanted. The nature of the purled border around the stockinette ground motif is to recede, so the leaf appears to lift forward. Therefore I had to find a purl decrease that does not attract any attention, but blends into the background as much as possible.
So I hit the books and videos to find as many ways to make a purl decrease on the right side of the fabric as possible, and made a swatch to document what I found, using the same size needle and yarn as my pattern swatch.
Charting alone does not work for me. I need a chart reference but must knit on the swatch to see what works best in the specific project.
Decreasing for the top of the head:
I picked up the knitting at row 8: There are several ways to decrease a pair of purls
After trying and 'tinking' (knit spelled backward, aka ripping) alternate ways to decrease a purl stitch on the right side to find a pleasing appearance, I chose one and continued the pattern until every other leaf was gone (in the 'half drop' - see the chart above.)
My wig stand came from a big-box fabric store and was on sale for $5.
Hat Swatch:
