Fleur de Lis

This lovely non-Niebling pattern, which I unofficially named “Fleur de Lis”, was not fun to knit using cotton thread. However; the silk and wool blend I used (color photo) was somewhat better. Part of what made the knitting ‘uncomfortable’ is that, unlike most Niebling patterns, but often in Shetland knitting, yarn overs are worked with an adjacent plain knit stitch so that the yarn over lies on top of the plain knit stitch. For exampke, a knit 2 together will involve 1 plain knit stitch and what was a yarn over on the previous round — getting the needle under that yarn over is a pain. The reverse is also a pain, that is ssk where first a plain knit stitch is slipped, then the following yarn over is slipped — getting the needle under that stitch requires extra effort/focus…But, for me, all of that is worth it. W hat also slows the knitting down is doing what it takes to shorten the excessively long lace ladder rungs or floats within the large leaves. Surprisingly what does not shorten these rungs is replacing double yarn overs with single yarn overs — the double yarn over must be completely omitted and replaced on the next round by working knit 1, purl 1 in the strand between the omitted yarn overs.

Perhaps another reason this pattern appeals is ‘patchwork crochet envy’. The color photo on the cover is intended to give a hint of an idea for a long scarf or vest…Would work on one of the two myself, except I have to get back to test knitting the Chrysantheme based triangular shawl… ;-)

One last thing… This time when I knitted an I-cord bind off, I did not have the excuse that the yarn was uneven… So when the cording turned out uneven, it was because I did not tighten the stitches after each row — I usually don’t tighten anything when knitting, but this case demonstrates that it really needs to be done… The photo of the results was modified to hide this uneven bind off… I can be persuaded to post the unedited if you promise to indeed laugh! ;-)

To view purchase page, visit click here.

Happy Knitting!

Chrysantheme – Part 1

Hi All,

Just posted the page for the pattern below.

The reason this post is entitled “…Part 1” is that I have also been working on a smaller, triangular version of the pattern for use as a shawl. I did not finish yet because the adaptation turns out to be a bit more detailed than I thought it would be. So, stay tuned… By Monday I hope to post a pic of the adaptation as well as the pattern itself. In other words, the full pattern can only be used to knit a triangle only after a couple of rather tricky modifications.

Almost forgot, the materials required given in the original instructions are less than helpful in that (1) No size is given for the “Art Silk” to be used; and (2) the needle size is given as “Nr. 0”, which I translate as US Size 6-0! My guess is that on US Size 3 needles, the yarn required would be 750-1000 yards. By knitting the smaller triangle and doing some geometric calculations, I should be able to come up with a better estimate.

For purchase info, Click Here.

Happy Knitting!