Stitchboard Admin message #2
Re: Help! Tricky Stocking Pattern
November 27, 2017 at 1:01:36 AM  (in response to lpc20 message #1)
 
Hi, what a great pattern!

I can completely understand your confusion! I don't know if this will help, but when encountering a difficult pattern like this one, I like to write out each confusing instruction (LOL, it helps to use a computer...I wouldn't do this by hand) and separate the more difficult parts from other parts, when possible, such as this:
Row 1 (right side): Ch 4 (counts as first dc and on additional ch here and throughout), dc in 4th ch from hook (increase made),

1/1 LC (1 over 1 Left Cross) = Skip next stitch, Fpdc around next st; working in front of Fpdc just made, Fpdc around the skipped stitch,

dc in next 2 sts,

3/3 RC (3 over 3 Right Cross) = Skip next 3 stitches, Fpdc around each of next 3 stitches; working behind the 3 Fpdc just made, Fpdc in each of the 3 skipped stitches,

Fpdc around each of next 3 dc, dc in next 2 sts,

[1/1 LC (1 over 1 Left Cross) = Skip next stitch, Fpdc around next st; working in front of Fpdc just made, Fpdc around the skipped stitch,
 dc in next 2 sts] twice,

2/2 RC (2 over 2 Right Cross) = Skip next 2 stitches, Fpdc around each of next 2 stitches; working behind the 2 Fpdc just made, Fpdc in each of the 2 skipped stitches,

2/2 LC (2 over 2 Left Cross) = Skip next 2 stitches, Fpdc around each of next 2 stitches; working in front of the 2 Fpdc just made, Fpdc in each of the 2 skipped stitches,

[dc in next 2 sts,
1/1 LC (1 over 1 Left Cross) = Skip next stitch, Fpdc around next st; working in front of Fpdc just made, Fpdc around the skipped stitch] twice,

2 dc in last dc (top of turning ch), turn—43 sts.

I'm assuming here you're familiar with the Bpdc and Fpdc instructions, so that's not the issue, just the 1/1 and 2/2, etc, which would be soooooo confusing to me!

I should add there's no magic at all to what I did. I literally took the text from the PDF, pasted it to a word processor file, separated the more confusing instructions (while still keeping bracketed instructions together), used the expanded instructions from the PDF wherever the confusing ones appeared and also boldfaced the confusing instructions.

The other thing I'll say about something like this is most likely, once you know what you're doing, you'll ultimately not need the expanded instructions. But this is definitely the way I would do this, and I can see you'll have the same issue for the back, so I would do the same for the back. I know it's time consuming to do this...as I said, though, there's no magic. It's just a process of copying and pasting into a new document!

I did this once with a very difficult knitting pattern that was driving me totally nuts. Not having the pattern in PDF form (it was in a book), after frogging repeatedly I spent at least half an hour to an hour typing up instructions, checking them again and again, until I had all instructions in expanded form. Then and only then did it make sense! Otherwise, I would have given up.

Please let me know if this helps!

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