If you have more than 500 patterns in a book, some will have to be also rans.  I have been avoiding the Arabic Diamonds, pg 22 and Double Woven Stitch in two colours, pg 95 for a while.  I did manage to use the arabic cross a hat or so ago, but this one seemed even worse to me than that.  

I had a bit of fun playing with the top.  I used 6 points of decrease and did an ssk on every other row until I had 30 stitches left from the 120 I started with. I cast off and then cast back into the back of each stitch and did some swirls and some spikes.  For the swirls I cast on 17 stitches, then knit back 12 of them.  I turned round and did k,p,k in each stitch back up, then cast it all back off to the base.  For the spikes, I cast on 15 stitches and cast them right back off.  I picked up and knit the other half of the cast off stitches and did a couple of roll backs where I garter stitched 8 rows and joined back into the base,  I decreased from 30 to 20 between the rolls so the second one was smaller.