I imposed upon a German speaking co-worker today, asking if he could help me with a line or two of the Duchrow annotation. Although fluent in his native language, he didn’t speak knitting, but between the two of us we pieced together a bit more detail.
It turns out that the instructions on this one have a special note that II is in fact to be interpreted as one YO, not two. But again – about half the time in order to make the required stitch count on the next patterned row the intervening plain knit row needs to place two stitches into that YO. There is no alternate direction on when to k2 into a YO and when not to do so; nor is there direction on when $ means k1tbl, and when it means k2tbl. So even though I now have the relevant bit of annotation translated, I am no more enlightened than I was yesterday.
To answer some privately posted questions
- The yarn I’m using was a gift. I’m afraid it has no brand name, and I’m unfamiliar with its original provenance.
- I’m knitting directly off the cone. I haven’t bothered to rewind a smaller quantity.
- I don’t have a good feel for how big my final piece will be, and that doesn’t bother me one bit. The directions say that the finished cloth is around 60cm (a little over 23.6 inches), but I think my piece will be larger. Probably on the order of 30-33 inches across if I work it as given. I’d like to go significantly larger – possibly 56 inches across. I may add a course or two of other repeats. We’ll see when I get there. There’s a ton of yarn, so the only limits are my own perseverance and willingness to tinker.
Now I have questions of my own.
- Is there anyone else out there working from the Duchrow series?
- If not those books – has anyone knit from the K. Ichida “Knitted Lace Designs of the Modern Mode” series – the Japanese language Modern Lace series reissuing classic European patterns?
Progress? Not really. I’m entering another chaos period at work, and had to rip back tonight. I managed to drop some stitches when I did yesterday’s photo. I wasn’t able to rework them, so I had to go back four rounds. Three steps forward, one step back.
String-Or-Nothing 
I bought all three of the Duchrow books a few months ago (after seeing your blog, I think). I peruse them every time I’m looking for a lace pattern, but haven’t made the jump yet. There are lots of great things in there, but they haven’t lined up with my projects so far. It would be a shame to let all those patterns go unheeded, though! Thanks for pointing them out, and I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually. =)