There is an evergreen vine with purple flowers, native to Australia and popular in Victorian gardens, called Hardenbergia violacea, or “Happy Wanderer.” I have chosen the name for this pattern because the lace looks, to me, like leaves on trailing vines. It also looks complex, but there are only 6 stitches and 8 rows in each pattern repeat, and that makes me happy!

As well as rewriting an 1884 Infant’s Knitted Sweater pattern that uses the stitch, I am designing a shawl/baby blanket that incorporates this lace too, so I have made a cloth to practice it.

One of the little tricks that will make knitting go more quickly and happily is to learn and practice a shortcut for doing a one-step skp decrease--and you can use the same method for the double decrease (the ‘slip 1, knit 2 together, pass the slipped stitch over.’) in some of the pattern rows. This method is described on my blog as well as in the cloth pattern. It comes from the original 1884 baby sweater pattern.