My nephew was working with us on the wands then, and quickly grew bored. Being a math/computer guy, he came up with a few designs (one of which was 2-color with the spirals going in different directions!) that were fun and easy for us to follow.
Since then, I tried to get him to put together a little booklet of designs, but the silly boy keeps putting things like academic degrees first. Pfffftttt....
So today when I got another request for instructions, I decided to just go ahead and put them out there to share....
From my nephew, H. Rob Schwartz:
"Sure, the trick's pretty simple.
"Over 2, under 3" makes for a nice pattern, but any over/under-type combination is fine so long as the total number of stems in a step is equal to 5 (so 2 + 3 = 5). So "over 1, under 1, over 1, under 2" would also work (since 1+1+1+2 = 5), but it might look a little busy.
The number of stems must be plus or minus 1 from a multiple of 5. For example, 24 and 26 are OK, but 25 isn't. 29 and 31 are OK, but 30 isn't, etc. If the number of stems *were* a multiple of five, the rows wouldn't spiral around the columns, since there's no offset. Each column in every row would be the same. Using an offset of 2 instead of 1 (so 23 or 27 instead of 24 or 26) should also work, but might make for tighter spirals.
To sum up:
--> Pattern: Over 2, under 3.
--> # of stems: (multiple of 5) plus or minus 1.
Good luck!"
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