Today’s swatch is Clamshell Pattern, which is a total pain in the butt to work! I found it impossible to k5tog tbl with knitting needles, so I used a crochet hook.

This is the wrong side, which I thought was interesting too.   If I ever needed a stitch to approximate toad skin, this is what I would use.

In honor of April showers, here is the raindrop-looking Tear Drop pattern.

If you squint, they look like Easter eggs. Happy Easter!

Today’s swatch is Arcade Pattern.  It’s shown in a 9×9 square in the book, but I think it looks much better as a single row border.  And that’s all I’ll say about that, since it’s in a design I’m working on now ;)

This week’s swatch is Cornflower Pattern, which is a very close cousin to Bud Stitch.

Here is a detail shot.

I like this pattern a lot better than Bud Stitch. I think it would look great on baby things, or as an overall texture on a sweet little cardigan like Cherry.

In honor of the change in seasons, today’s swatch is Bud Stitch

This is a fun and easy pattern with a great texture for housewares or maybe baby things. I would hesitate to use it on a full-sized adult garment because of the possibility that it would look like a bunch of tumors or growths.

Happy spring!

I was getting completely sick of those yarn-over panels, so I decided to switch it up with Rapunzel’s Braid.  I’d only done twisted stitches once before, as an accent in some socks for my mom.  I liked doing twisted stitches.  It was easy, I should do a twist-stitch project one of these days.  Any recommendations?

I usually like to do the WTP swatches EXACTLY as described, but I did this one a little differently because I can’t help myself.  As BW describes them, right twists leave stitches oriented normally, while left twists are done by knitting through the back loop.  They didn’t look symmetrical enough for me, so before the left twists I reoriented the stitches as if I was doing an SSK.  I think it looks better that way.

Hmm. This is getting rather boring, no? I should move to something other than yarn-over patterns for awhile. Oh well. Here is Comb Stitch

Version I:

Version II:

In contrast to the previous entries in the “Fancy Ribbings” series (see Waved Ribbon Stitch and Track of the Turtle) I think I like Version II better here. I’ll do Folded-Ribbon Stitch this week to get it over with (I can’t just leave it there, all by itself!) and then move on to cables or something.

This week’s swatch is Parenthetical Rib from the Second Treasury.  Eh, I’m not a fan. It reminds me too much of a labrys or other double-bladed axe to be suitable for a knitting pattern. Then again, if you’re searching for an axe-like knitting pattern, I’ve found just the thing!

This week’s swatch is Drop-stitch Honeycomb from the Second Treasury.

I like the right side fine, I guess. The wrong side is really cool though, so much so that I hesitate to call it the wrong side.

It has a really cool bumpy, quilted-looking texture. I think it would be really neat in a tailored jacket, or as a more subtle texture in a garment like Surface.

The pattern is easy to work, too. Five rows out of six are plain stockinette, and the texture is created by dropping stitches and picking up the threads every sixth row. The dropping maneuver is a little fiddly at first, but it’s fine once you get used to it.

This week’s pattern for the Walker Treasury Project is Track of the Turtle.  Here is Version I

 
and here is Version II.

 The two versions are created in very similar ways, but Version I has “rest rows” in which you just purl back without any patterning, and Version II does not.  I feel like Version I is a well-used pattern, and that I’ve seen it all over the place, but I can’t think of any good examples at the moment.  Can you think of any?

The name didn’t make any sense to me until I saw this.   Now I get it.