Author: Naomi Parkhurst

Railroad Tracks: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

Railroad Tracks: a free lace knitting stitch pattern
| Naomi Parkhurst

This is the final result from my étude post last week. I am not sure everyone technically would call it lace, but it fits my personal definition. (It’s got deliberate holes in it.) It does have something to be remembered on every row, so if you prefer stitch patterns with rest rows, this isn’t for you. It’s otherwise pretty straightforward once you’re familiar with the bunny ears decrease. Columns of alternating YOs and decreases march up the fabric with reverse stockinette stitch between.

Feel free to change how many plain stitches are in the stockinette sections, or even make them wider and insert some other vertical lace design inside!

For best effect, don’t stretch it a lot when pinning it out. I stretched it vertically more than horizontally.

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Rune: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

Rune: a free lace knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

The first word for this month is rune, suggested by Catnach on Patreon. I’ve been interested in runes in a mild way since reading Tolkien as a child, and I’ve always found the angular letters interesting to look at. My lace is not so angular, but I’m particularly fond of the way this one came out!

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. I make two of these into knitting stitches each month: the first is drawn from the collection of new words; the second is drawn from the collection of unused words. A random number generator helps me choose this, and then I get to work, first turning the letters into numbers, then charting the numbers onto grids in various ways. Finally, when I make the chart into lace, I turn the marked squares into yarnovers and work out where to place the corresponding decreases. (I usually make lace; occasionally I make cables instead.) I also make a chart for any craft that uses a square grid for designing; this goes in a separate post.

The charts are not meant in any way to look like the original words; the words are the seeds of my creativity.

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Étude no 23: noodling around a little with bunny ears back

| Naomi Parkhurst

Periodically I like to play with techniques in swatches to see what I can do with them. When I write about this, I call the posts my études, because they’re somewhat like the exercises musicians do for practicing.

This time I was looking at a potential chart for one of my Patreon words, and wondering if I could make something work. I had an idea about a combination to try and I decided to make a swatchlet to see.

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Charting mosaic knitting in StitchMastery

| Naomi Parkhurst

It occurs to me that it might be helpful (for other designers at least) to explain how I use my chart software to make mosaic knitting charts. For one thing, while there is a mosaic knitting format built into StitchMastery, it isn’t the one I personally prefer, so I do some extra editing to make my charts in the Barbara Walker format.

This is not a post about how to design mosaic knitting stitches; it is a post about how to produce a particular kind of chart format in the StitchMastery software. I don’t know enough about other knitting chart software to know how the methods translate.

I also use vector graphics art software for some of the final editing on these charts. Some major examples of this kind of software include Adobe Illustrator (subscription software), Inkscape (free and open source), Affinity Designer (this is what I use on our desktop computer). I usually prefer using Graphic for iOS. (They also have a version for MacOS which I have not tried.)

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Pegasus: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

Pegasus: a free lace knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

The word I drew from my word hoard for this stitch pattern is Pegasus, suggested by Bonnie on Patreon. Pegasus was one of my favorite mythological animals when I was a child, so it’s nice to revisit those memories.

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. I make two of these into knitting stitches each month: the first is drawn from the collection of new words; the second is drawn from the collection of unused words. A random number generator helps me choose these, and then I get to work, first turning the letters into numbers, then charting the numbers onto grids in various ways. Finally, when I make the chart into lace, I turn the marked squares into yarnovers and work out where to place the corresponding decreases. (I usually make lace; occasionally I make cables instead.) I also make a chart for any craft that uses a square grid for designing; this goes in a separate post.

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Doodle digression – various colorwork charts

| Naomi Parkhurst

Last week I showed how I turned a doodled colorwork chart into a very different-looking mosaic knitting chart. I had a plan worked out for a series of posts showing how that original colorwork chart would look as a knit-purl pattern, and even as lace. I will come to those blog posts eventually, I hope, but I got whacked in the head by an idea and feel compelled to run with it.

Important note: after the initial mosaic chart, none of the charts in this post are suitable for mosaic knitting.

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Doodle: a free mosaic knitting chart

| Naomi Parkhurst

The other week, I posted a needlework chart I called doodle, because I’d doodled on graph paper. I did in fact have some particular things in mind when I made the doodle; I wanted a design that I could turn into various kinds of knitting stitches to demonstrate how that works.

A key thing when I’m playing with stitch patterns is that I’m rarely concerned with making the variations look like the original chart. I’m more interested in seeing how the original chart is transformed by the process.

This variation is mosaic knitting. The nice thing about mosaic knitting is that the charts are similar to the final appearance of the knitting, so I’m not going to provide a swatch this time. Mosaic knitting looks difficult, but it’s really easy to do! Basically, knit two-row stripes, and slip stitches from the row below to make the contrasting pattern. If you can knit stripes, you can knit mosaic patterns.

Here’s an article from Twist Collective about how it works.

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Ginger: a free needlework chart for any craft

Ginger: a free needlework chart for any craft, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

The random number generator picked Ginger for my first encoded word post of this month, suggested by Lara, one of my Patreon supporters.

I usually develop a complicated knitting stitch pattern for each word, but I also like to provide a basic chart for any craft that’s worked on a grid: beads, cross stitch, whatever. I also try to provide an image of the pattern repeated all over not as a chart. It doesn’t necessarily look like a finished object for any particular craft, but I just want to give a sense of it in use.

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