mosaic knitting

Dog version 2: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern

Dog version 2: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

It hasn’t occurred to me before to play around with mosaic knitting layouts the way I do with lace knitting. I think this is because I assumed that it would be too annoying to make sure it would work structurally. But that nice plain stripe at the top of Dog from last week made me realize that it would be easy for this one.

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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Dog: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern

Dog: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

A while back, I encoded the word Dog 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.

Continue reading →

Tea: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern

Tea: a free mosaic knitting stitch pattern, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

A while back, I encoded the word Tea 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.

Continue reading →

Mosaic knitting: an easy way to do colorwork

| Naomi Parkhurst

If you’ve ever wanted to knit colorwork designs, but find the idea of stranded colorwork intimidating because of handling more than one yarn at once, then mosaic knitting might be for you: each row is worked while holding only one yarn. (Stranded knitting is not actually as hard as it looks either, in my opinion, but it’s not as easy as mosaic.)

The key to mosaic knitting is the slip stitch. Mosaic knitting essentially involves knitting two row stripes in alternating colors. You can be knitting along in one color, but when you need a contrasting color, you slip a stitch instead of knitting it. Because the previous row was a different color, it looks as if you knit that stitch in the contrasting color. In other words, you only need to hold one strand of yarn at a time while knitting, and yet it looks as if there are two colors in that row.

I’m going to demonstrate how this works with photos and words in this post; I’m also going to explain how to read the specific kind of mosaic knitting charts I like to use.

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Some more random mosaic knitting charts

George: a free mosaic knitting chart, by Naomi Parkhurst
| Naomi Parkhurst

Here are two more mosaic charts I doodled recently. (They aren’t made using my encoding method, so there’s no hidden meaning involved.) I couldn’t think of names for one of them based on appearances, so I just went with a family name.

I checked all of them at Scott Pakin’s mosaic charting webpage which has a feature that checks to make sure that a mosaic chart is actually possible.

I’m going to have to write up a thorough tutorial on mosaic knitting and how to read this specific kind of chart now that Twist Collective’s awesome website is gone. In the meantime, here’s the closest thing I can find right now. (The isolated column to the right in my charts indicates what color is being used in a given row, like the first column in the charts on that page.)

An added benefit to finding that page is learning that the same charts can be used for mosaic crochet, which I didn’t know was a thing!

Follow link for charts

Some random mosaic knitting charts

| Naomi Parkhurst

Here are four mosaic charts I doodled over the weekend, each a variation of the first. (They aren’t made using my encoding method, so there’s no hidden meaning involved.) I couldn’t think of names for two of them based on appearances, so I just went with some family names.

I checked all of them at Scott Pakin’s mosaic charting webpage which has a feature that checks to make sure that a mosaic chart is actually possible.

I’m going to have to write up a thorough tutorial on mosaic knitting and how to read this specific kind of chart now that Twist Collective’s awesome website is gone. In the meantime, here’s the closest thing I can find right now. (The isolated column to the right in my charts indicates what color is being used in a given row, like the first column in the charts on that page.)

An added benefit to finding that page is learning that the same charts can be used for mosaic crochet, which I didn’t know was a thing!

Follow link for charts

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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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.

Continue reading →