My interpretation of the stockings worn by Queen Eleanora di Toledo, a Queen of Italy who died in the mid 1500’s. Pattern is recreated from photos and descriptions by various authors and researchers. Photos of the extant artifacts can be found in Rutt’s A History of Hand Knitting.

A version of this pattern for testing was posted at Georg’s Research.

Helpful hint: Some knitters are having issues with the pattern when the eyelet lace begins to happen. Here is a solution if you have a problem at this point.

Make your yarn over at the beginning of row 25 instead, but don’t count it as one of your row 25 stitches. This will solve the issue you’re having with tangling. Then ignore the note about slipping the first stitch of row 26 onto the first needle.

One of the knitters who posted was able to clarify beautifully: “The issue as I understood it was this: there are two places where you move a stitch from the left needle to the right needle, and then two rows later you move a stitch from the right needle to the left needle. Some people were saying that the stitch that moves from left to right never gets worked, and that the stitch that moves right to left gets worked twice. I was saying that the stitches still get worked in the normal order, it’s just that the shift moved the beginning of the round from between the needles to one stitch in (thus not having to end a needle with the 3-into-3 stitch) and then the second shift moved the BOR back to where it was before.” Precisely.