DSD and other people’s designs

| Naomi Parkhurst

I came up with the DSD double decrease several years ago. It’s a double decrease that is visually an exact mirror of sk2p: work ssk (or any of the other left-leaning single decreases), slip it back to the left needle and pass the next stitch over it, then slip it to the right needle again.
It took me a while to find a name for it. I knew I couldn’t have been the first person to invent it, and I wanted to use the same name as other designers. When I asked on Ravelry, I got a kind answer from Annie Maloney (Ravelry patterns, stitch dictionaries), who also designs lace. She told me that she calls this decrease a double slip decrease because that is what Barbara Abbey called it in her book about lace design. Annie Maloney abbreviates it as DSD, so I do likewise.

I didn’t know if I’d ever come across it again in anyone else’s work, but amazingly, in the last couple of months I’ve come across examples in two books I’ve had for a very long time: my Mon Tricot stitch dictionary and Susanna Lewis’s Knitting Lace, which provides charts for a 19th century stitch sampler and talks about lace design.

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Union: a needlework chart for any craft

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

The random number generator picked Union from the suggestions for my third encoded word post this month, suggested by Smart Mouth’d, 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.

click for charts and more information

Union: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

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

The first word I drew from this month’s new Patreon words is Union, suggested by Smart mouth’d, a Patreon supporter. The word was suggested on the Labor Day (US ) for obvious reasons. Solidarity! (I’m seeing more and more discussion of unions in US tech companies, which is such a welcome change.)

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. I’m making three of these into knitting stitches this month: two from from the collection of new words; the third 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.

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

follow link for charts and instructions

K3tog: a tip for tight knitters

| Naomi Parkhurst

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a tight knitter. This doesn’t trouble me much these days; I’ve loosened up enough that I don’t need to struggle to push each stitch along the needle one at a time the way I did when I was a child. I often get the gauge on the yarn label using the recommended needles. (Yes, really, though it’s not as useful as you’d think.) The biggest benefit to being a tight knitter is that I don’t need to knit socks using the thinnest needles.

But there’s times that it used to get a little aggravating, and I’ve realized that the reason those times don’t happen any more is that I’ve worked out various unconscious tricks for dealing with them. One of the things that used to vex me was knitting (or purling) three stitches together: such a struggle to get the needle through all three stitches at once!

Here’s how I loosen them up:

Stricken: a needlework chart for any craft

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

The random number generator picked Stricken from my word hoard for my second encoded word post this month, suggested by Red Urchin, one of my Patreon supporters. Stricken means knitting in German.

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.

click for charts

Stricken: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

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

The word I drew from my word hoard for this stitch pattern is Stricken, suggested by Red Urchin, a Patreon supporter. Stricken means knitting in German: what fun!

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.

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

Follow link for charts and instructions

Water: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern

Water version 1: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

A while back, I encoded the word Water and made it into lace. For this week’s post, I reworked one of the code grids I made while planning that post and turned it into a mosaic knitting stitch pattern. (I used the process described in this post.)

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 a detailed blog post I wrote about how it works.

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Liberty: a free lace knitting stitch pattern

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

The first word I drew from the Patreon word suggestions for this month is Liberty, suggested by Maura on Patreon. Liberty has lots of possible references, but right at this instant, my mind goes instantly to the Lady Liberty statue made by the protestors in Hong Kong. (Designed and created after the word was suggested.)

Each month, my Patreon backers have the chance to suggest words for me to encode as knitting stitches. Starting this month, I’ll make three of these into knitting stitches each month: two drawn from the collection of new words and the third 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.

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

Follow link for charts and instructions