Vox: a charted design for any craft

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The random number generator picked Vox from the suggestions for this post, suggested by Catnach, one of my Patreon supporters.

I was originally going to also use this chart as the basis for my lace, but when I put in the obvious decreases, it turned out to be the same result as a lace design I have seen somewhere before. Two friends have said they think they’ve knit it in shawls. I could have gone ahead and published that for my Vox lace; it’s perfectly ordinary for people to come up with things like this independently. But since I knew it existed already, I didn’t feel like it. See bottom of this post for a photo of my rough draft swatch.

I developed a different lace stitch pattern for Vox, but I also like to provide a basic chart for any craft that’s worked on a grid: beads, cross stitch, whatever. I try to provide at least some digital art of the pattern repeated all over not as a chart. It doesn’t necessarily look like a finished object for any particular craft, but I want to give a sense of it in use. (I try to make it look like knitting when it’s got floats short enough for easy stranded knitting.)

How the Vox charted design might look as stranded knitting. There are angled lines that touch each other in some places and approximate it in others, so that they make an effect of almost-diamonds nested in larger almost-diamonds.
chart showing how to work the Vox charted design by means of dark and light squares. Written instructions in blog post.
click chart to enlarge
  • Vox has a repeat of 10 + 1 columns and 10 or 10 + 5 rows (end after either row 5 or 10)..
  • In the written instructions, color A is the light squares above, and color B is the dark.
  • The written instructions below are formatted for stranded knitting, but it is my hope that they could be translated into instructions for other crafts. For instance, if working filet crochet, 1A could be one open square and 2B could be two filled-in squares.
  • This pattern is written in rounds, but because each line has mirror symmetry, the colors can be read in flat rows as written. If knitting, just work purl stitches on alternating rows instead of knit.
  • Designers, please feel free to use this in your patterns (no need to ask). I’d like credit but won’t be offended if people don’t give it.
  • My blog posts and stitch patterns are supported by subscriptions on Patreon or donations to my Paypal tip jar in the sidebar. If you appreciate my work, please consider helping out. Thanks!

Round 1: work knit as follows; 1A, *1A, 1B, 5A, 1B, 2A; work from *. (11 sts)

Round 2: work knit as follows; 1A, *1B, 1A, 1B, 3A, (1B, 1A) × 2; work from *.

Round 3: work knit as follows; 1A, *3A, 1B, 1A, 1B, 4A; work from *.

Round 4: work knit as follows; 1A, *1B, 7A, 1B, 1A; work from *.

Round 5: work knit as follows; 1A, *1A, 1B, 5A, 1B, 2A; work from *.

Round 6: work knit as follows; 1A, *2A, (1B, 3A) × 2; work from *.

Round 7: work knit as follows; 1A, *(1A, 1B) × 4, 2A; work from *.

Round 8: work knit as follows; 1A, *1B, 7A, 1B, 1A; work from *.

Round 9: work knit as follows; 1A, *3A, 1B, 1A, 1B, 4A; work from *.

Round 10: work knit as follows; 1A, *2A, (1B, 3A) × 2; work from *.

Rough draft swatch of the first lace I came up with for Vox:

Knitted lace based on the above chart. The holes in the lace make the lines described in the alt text for the illustration for this post.

(please pardon the blurry mobile photo and the smallness of my rough draft swatch; this is what I sent to my friends.)

I had picked this chart because I was delighted to have a lace chart that would have no double yarnovers and would probably look good. That is in fact the case! I like this very much.

I have not yet gone through all my stitch dictionaries, but I have not yet been able to identify a name for this aside from vox. I just know that it exists already. It probably starts on a different row, but works out to the same overall appearance.