Designing lace. Sort of.

So, the pattern I'm working on with Brooklyn Handspun has a bit of lace in it. While it is perfectly legal to use lace motifs from a stitch dictionary, I couldn't find the exact lace design that I had in mind.

I've created original cables before - or at least cables that I didn't consult a stitch dictionary to make. How much harder could lace be?

Apparently, a lot if you suck at math like me.

Here's what I was working on:

Yarn: Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran

The top group is from Stitchionary. Then I tossed the book aside and created the next two sections. The bottom section is close to my final product (which I don't want to post so I don't ruin the surprise when the pattern comes out). I though I had it all figured out, and went about knitting my sample.

Then the whole math thing hit. The first three rows of the 8-row repeat went swimmingly. Then at the fourth row, I realized that my number of stitches didn't work out like I thought.

Grr. Back to the drawing (swatching?) board it was.

Making a chart really helped me figure out what went wrong, but I want to make one more - larger - swatch before I go back to the sample sweater.

Wish me luck!