Saturday 5 January 2008

New Style of Heirloom Knitting

It's not the Am Kamin which is the winner with me, but the oak leaf and the acorn motif.


So I had to try it - in line with my new resolution of knitting only from my stash - as I just discovered this nice green yarn ( too long forgotten).

Here it is:


and it's really easy.

Or to be more specific it became easy when I've realised that the twisted symbols (or the 'flying fishes') are NOT 'ktb's but strand increases. They are suppose to be oriented towards the right (the bold ones) or towards the left, the plain ones.

A brilliant explanation here: Strand Increase. Read this and you'll be fine. The Strand Increase(1) is for the bold twisted stitch, the Strand Increase(2) is for the plain one.

Next challenge is the mini chart A (8 stitches). It's about a small 'bobble' and a cable - because you would like to 'push' the bobble a bit away from the leaf main body.

So it goes like this: save 3 stitches on a cn at the back, knit the bobble according to the mini chart for the bobble (5 stitches reduced to one) then purl 3 from the cable needle. Easy.

Chart B is the bobble on the other side, and it is symmetrical. I trust my readers to be able to figure it out.

My swatch above has two mistakes, unfortunately I'm too lazy to go back a long way to correct anything. First there are two purled lines in the acorn pattern and I missed one - then I've lost one or two stitches from the background at some point, so my main leaf is slightly leaning towards the left. Sorry :).

Let's just call it the Leaning Oak Leaf in a windy day.

The book can be found here in YesAsia. Or just collect the ISBN number and feel free to google.