This is the first in a series of DuO patterns. I’m not crazy about it, but I’m posting it in case someone else wants to try it. I remember how much trouble I had designing the number 8 and here I just stumbled across it. (However, this is what I’d call the negative version; the back of the square is not as clearly an 8. Still it might be worth a rewrite…)
For rhetoric about this pattern, see Ladders 1a and 1b.
18 April 2019 UPDATE—A blog friend informs me that this pattern—perhaps feeling it didn’t get enough individual attention—has made another appearance under a different name a few weeks later. It’s now going by the name of Lattice Borders original, amended. It’s difficult for me to keep from running across the same patterns from time to time—especially the simpler, more elegant ones. I once invented a pattern I really loved and called it Basketweave, only to discover that it was good old Horizontal Xs. I also called one Withy Fence, but it was Horizontal Xs all along.
This might not be the best yarn for weaving patterns. When I bought it on clearance at Michaels a few years ago I wanted to try it out right away, so I sat down and made up two patterns (see also Ladders 2). For over two years I didn’t look at them again, but whenever I thought of them I remembered how much I liked the look of the yarn—which looks different in the photo of the back of the square (unnatural light). The ladder shows on the back of the square; this explains why I made up Ladders 2 (always like to get the motif onto the front).
Gotta admit, I like design challenges. I like them best when they work out, of course. This one did. A friend and member of the Facebook Pin Loom Weaving Support Group asked if I could design a square that looked like the stripes of a flag waving in the wind. After a number of attempts—and several rejected ideas—this is what I arrived at.
Let this be a lesson to me: don’t post old patterns without exploring them further. The Recessed Square pattern I posted earlier today (and I do mean earlier) was technically a rectangle—which I knew at the time. With very little trouble I added a couple of rows and came up with a square-within-a-square design. Here it is.
It’s been nearly three years since we used this design in our first Weave-Along (WAL) on the Facebook Pin Loom Weaving Support Group. I should say it’s been bothering me ever since, but it wasn’t. However, it bothered several others at the time of the WAL—people who were good at spotting oddities in weaving designs. My squares were so obscure looking that I didn’t notice the inconsistencies. (See original Loomette pattern diagram at bottom of this post.)