Doilyhead's Blog

For years I bemoaned the fact that I could not find this pattern anywhere under the name Beyer Strickschrift 71074 Harro. However, it was hiding out in Labores Beyer Nr. 10: 28 Tapetes Grandes y Pequeños de Punto de Media, as Model 12 “Zefiro” (“Zephyr”) which name means “gentle breeze or favorable winds”. Turns out I had inadvertently left the magazine in storage and only recently retrieved it, sigh! The word Harro is an old German/Teutonic name for boys, meaning “warrior” or “ruler of an estate”. It is also the name of a medicinal plant terminalia chebula native to South Asia, which meaning Niebling probably had in mind because of his love of flowers.

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Charting is usually somewhat fun, but not this time — even though the double leaf motif is similar to those in Ingeborg and Blattranke:

The photo below shows only a small part of the challenge. Keep reading if you dare!

Mr. Smokey Robinson is a tough critic! ;-)

Ultimately, the major problem was not the scale of the chart, but rather three other problems: 1) the extraordinary length of the pattern lines, specifically when proofreading the charts against the written instructions. Matching the symbols in the chart with the knitting term abbreviations in the written instructions is such fun because the chart is read from right to left while the written instructions are read from left to right. Normally, this isn’t a problem except when the pattern is deceptively repetitive, as in:

2) The hex mesh has to either match up or reverse on either side of the 7 stitch stockinette strip, depending on whether there is a central motif between the two strips of double leaves. As an example, there are two rounds in the chart where, a “Subsection” had to be made even though the the adjacent rounds have the exact same long sequence of stitches repeated twice. In other words, normally when a chart line is very long it is broken into sections and to work one repeat first work <Round Number>-1, then <same Round Number>-2, etc. However, for the “nearly” identical repeats along the same round, the variations cannot be placed in the next section, but rather have to be placed directly above the same round number in the current section. So don’t freak out when you see the charts! ;-)

3) When a new motif is begun within the hex mesh (i.e., between the two double leaf motifs), on either side of the new motif “knit 2 together, yo” and “yo, skp” are both replaced by “knit 2”, which was hard to spot in this pattern, again because of the repetitiveness and tiny symbols.

End of whining. Now for the trash talk:

Will have to test knit these two to see how they fit. (Hint, Hint…)

Finally, will also have to test knit one repeat of the border (because it is not clearly illuminated in the original photo and am not that good with Photoshop) and will update this post with the result. Meantime, this is what the cloth looks like to Round 195, that is,without the border:

Final suggestions:

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Thanks for reading this far, and Happy Knitting!